The Perilous Tower: The Gates of Good & Evil Book 3

by Ian Irvine

  But still the chance did not come. Flydd walked between the thapter and the sky galleon several times, but Skald was a good thirty yards away from both.

  Higher the sun rose. There were even more flies now, and their biting and stinging, and the itchy trails their feet left all over him, were almost unbearable.

  Endure! For the True Purpose!

  Now Flydd was shaking hands with Flangers and a small woman Skald had not seen before, and she climbed aboard the thapter. She must be a pilot, and they were about to fly it away. It was a bitter moment and he felt his uselessness keenly. How he longed to thwart them, to seize the precious thapter for himself and compel the pilot to fly it, and himself, home in triumph.

  Everyone moved back, and after several minutes of testing the mechanisms the thapter lifted slowly, circled the area, set down again and the lieutenant went aboard, carrying what Skald took to be sealed orders. The thapter climbed high into the sky and headed north. Now Flydd would leave as well. Skald closed his eyes in despair.

  All this, for nothing.

  A bright yellow flash high above. The thapter’s mechanism stuttered and it dropped as if it had momentarily lost the field, but climbed again. It levelled out, there came a dazzling blue-white flash, a whipcrack echoed across the sky, then it fell.

  ‘What the blazes is Chissmoul doing?’ cried Flydd. ‘Pull up, pull up!’

  The thapter did not pull up. Karan watched in helpless horror as it fell faster and faster, slammed into the top of a rocky hill a couple of miles away, hurling shattered stone everywhere, and burned furiously.

  The awful silence lasted minutes. She kept thinking that if she just closed her eyes and opened them again it might not have happened. But the evidence was all too clear, the fire so hot that it must have melted the rock into which the thapter had embedded itself.

  ‘Two great friends,’ choked Flydd. ‘Two of my best gone, for nothing.’ He reeled around in a circle.

  Nish steadied him, clung to him. ‘But … everything was checked and double-checked.’

  ‘The Merdrun must have booby-trapped it,’ Maelys whispered.

  ‘They butchered the artisans so we couldn’t question them,’ he said in a dead voice. ‘They must have a sus-magiz nearby, and when the thapter was high enough he blocked the power controller from afar.’

  ‘But the thapter was invaluable to them,’ said Flydd dazedly. ‘I don’t understand …’

  Nish put an arm across his shoulders. ‘To kill you, Xervish. They must have hoped you’d go aboard, and it was worth losing the thapter to have you dead.’

  Karan scanned the landscape and focused on another hill, a mile to the left. ‘He’s been watching from there, I’d say.’

  Flydd was running towards the sky galleon when a round green glow blossomed near the top of the hill, and faded. ‘A gate opening and closing. He’s gone.’

  ‘The utter, utter swine!’ said Nish. ‘What do we do now?’

  Flydd looked to have aged fifty years. The scars stood out lividly on his gaunt face and his eyes had a mad look. He stumbled across to the chief artisan, who was huddled with his two assistants. ‘Get your gear. And plenty of water.’

  ‘Surr?’ said the hunchbacked old fellow, anxiously.

  ‘Now!’

  They ran for their packs and gathered water bags.

  ‘Ashmode is eighty leagues that way.’ Flydd pointed north-east. ‘Get going.’

  The chief artisan stood his ground. ‘We haven’t been paid.’

  Flydd’s face went a ruddy purple. ‘You said you knew thapters backwards. You lied! You said you’d double-checked every part. Another lie! I have no room in my army for liars, or incompetents.’

  ‘Wasn’t my fault,’ the chief artisan whined. ‘Slorper checked the flight mechanism.’ He gestured to the smaller of his two assistants, a skinny fellow with an odd-shaped head, pointed at the top but massive in the jaw, like an egg standing on its base.

  ‘Well, Slorper?’ said Flydd.

  ‘I checked it as best I could, surr,’ Slorper said thickly. ‘But … I’ve never seen one before. And I told him so,’ he added with a flash of fury.

  Flydd raised his staff, and for a moment Karan thought he was going to blast the chief artisan to shreds. Then he pointed north-east and said, with icy calm, ‘If you’re still in sight in five minutes, you three will suffer the cruellest death listed in the scrutators’ torture manual.’

  They ran, their water bags wobbling.

  ‘Would you?’ Maelys said quietly when they were out of sight.

  ‘What good would it do?’ said Flydd, his shoulders sagging. ‘Why do I bother?’

  Everyone had their breaking point. Was this Flydd’s? But if he gave up, the war was lost.

  ‘We have to fight on, Xervish,’ she said. ‘We’re the world’s only hope now.’

  ‘I was tempted to take the thapter,’ Flydd said in a dead voice. ‘Very tempted. It’s – it was – faster than the sky galleon. I wish I had.’

  ‘Don’t say it!’ cried Nish. ‘I won’t hear it.’

  ‘This has gone on too long – the bloodshed, the ruin of everything good, the loss of so many innocent lives, so many old friends. The awful responsibility. My shoulders aren’t broad enough, Nish. I – I just want an end to it.’

  Flydd seemed a broken man, and if he was, all they could do was run for their lives. But that would be condemning Sulien, and Llian, and everyone else Karan cared about. The Merdrun did not suffer an enemy to live.

  She could not let it happen. She had to drag him out of his funk, and words would not do it.

  She stalked up to Flydd and struck him across the face, knocking him sideways. ‘Stop whining and pull yourself together! We’ve got a job to do.’ Instantly, she wanted to run. It took all her self-control to stand there and face his rage. ‘Whatever it takes, Flydd!’

  He felt his cheek, where her finger marks stood out lividly. His right hand clenched around his staff. ‘When I was a scrutator you would have died for that.’

  ‘Then act like one! Be the man Flangers would expect you to be. And avenge his death in the only way that would matter to him, by defeating the enemy.’

  ‘No one else can do it, Xervish,’ Nish said quietly. ‘Only you.’

  Flydd look a long, shuddering breath. ‘All right.’ He raised his staff. ‘All right!’

  He looked them in the eye, one by one. ‘A while ago you asked what we were going to do, Nish. We’re doing what we’ve always done.’ Flydd’s voice strengthened. ‘What you did when Chief Scrutator Ghoor held every one of us, save you, captive at Fiz Gorgo and began to make a fatal example of us. Even though there were hundreds against you, and Ullii was hunting you to cut out your heart, you never gave in.

  ‘You saved us that day, just as Karan’s implacable determination saved us on the mountain pass. We will fight the enemy to the last breath and the last drop of blood. If they want Santhenar they’ll have to kill us all, for we will never give in while one of us can stand and fight.’

  Flydd looked at them, one by one. ‘Will we?’

  Nish raised his blade, and Maelys and Clech their fists, and Karan hers. They had to win, because she knew better than anyone what the enemy would do to them if they won.

  ‘Never!’ she said.

  As Karan turned away, Flydd hissed in her ear, ‘If you ever strike me again, you’re a dead woman.’

  38

  I Don’t Need Your Help

  ‘We’ll head down to where the air-dreadnought crashed,’ said Klarm at dawn.

  Wilm was already up, eating cold, days-old stew. It was starting to taste bad, but he’d had much worse as a slave. It could take weeks to get out of here and they had no food to waste. ‘What for?’

  ‘Got an idea.’

  Wilm didn’t bother to ask. Klarm was even more prickly before he’d eaten.

  ‘It must be seven or eight miles from here,’ said Wilm as they set off. ‘Best part of a day’s walk, at your pace.’


  ‘Feel free to run ahead, boyo. Two’s company.’

  ‘Not when you’re like this,’ said Ilisial.

  ‘I’ll get the camp set up,’ said Wilm. It would be a pleasure to get away from the dwarf.

  It was pleasantly warm, the sun just peeping between the teeth of the eastern mountains. He strode down the track they’d made going up and down to a drinking water seep. Behind him Klarm said something Wilm did not catch and Ilisial laughed.

  He walked faster, wanting to be alone to think about the war. In brief farspeaker calls, Flydd had listed the latest disasters, but had not said what he was up to. Nor had he provided any news about Karan or Aviel, or what had happened to Llian.

  Wilm admired the Teller more than any man he had ever met, because Llian’s selfless help and inspiration had made Wilm the man he was today. And saved his life, too. If Llian, surely the world’s most incompetent fighter, hadn’t carried Mendark’s sword through incredible danger to help Wilm escape from the Merdrun’s slave camp, he would have died there.

  And what about Aviel, stuck with that malevolent bitch, Maigraith? Wilm never stopped thinking about Aviel. Why had he volunteered for this disastrous mission? Why hadn’t he stayed with her, where he belonged?

  He set up camp at the seep nearest to the wreckage of the air-dreadnought. It was nearly dark by the time Ilisial and Klarm appeared, and the agonising trek had reduced him to a shadow of his former self. Wilm ran up to them.

  ‘I’ll carry you the rest of the way, surr,’ he said quietly.

  ‘You’d enjoy showing off your strength, your young body, your two good legs, wouldn’t you?’ snarled Klarm.

  ‘I’m just trying to help.’

  ‘Ilisial has already offered, and I don’t need her help either. I’m not going all soft and helpless now.’

  ‘At least let me take your pack.’

  ‘Bugger off! I’ve carried it this far; I’ll take it the rest of the way.’

  Wilm accompanied them down. Klarm sat next to the seep, which Wilm had dug out to form a yard-wide pool, now lined with stones, and began to remove his wooden foot.

  ‘Can I do anything?’ said Ilisial.

  ‘Heat some water.’

  ‘The pot’s boiling on the campfire,’ said Wilm.

  Klarm favoured him with a sour smile. Ilisial carried hot water up to Klarm, who was unwinding the bandages from his stump in the gloom and shuddering.

  She came down again, anxiously. ‘I’m worried. His stump looks infected. Do you know anything about healing?’

  Klarm let out a howl of agony, swiftly cut off. Ilisial jumped up.

  ‘Leave me alone!’ yelled Klarm. ‘Water’s a bit hot, that’s all.’

  Ilisial sat down again, twisting her fingers together.

  ‘I’ve looked after quite a few battle wounds –’ Wilm broke off, fearing that it would set her off again, but she merely looked away. ‘But if he won’t let us near –’

  ‘What do we do if he gets really ill? We can’t carry him a hundred leagues to safety.’ She looked towards the campfire. ‘That stew ready?’

  ‘Yes, I made it hours ago.’

  ‘I’ll take some up to him.’

  A few minutes later she came back, the bowl untouched.

  ‘Said he wasn’t hungry. I’ve never known him to refuse a meal before.’

  What if he died? Wilm did not like Klarm, but had to admire the way he kept going, no matter what. And without him, how would they ever get out of here?

  He remained in his sleeping pouch the following day, and again refused food, though he did accept mugs of tea. The day after that he was up at dawn with his wooden foot on.

  ‘Are you better?’ Ilisial said anxiously.

  ‘Worked a bit of a healing on my stump. It’ll be all right now we’re not on the march …’

  He sat on a rock, staring at the bamboo hoops.

  ‘You’ve got a plan,’ said Ilisial. ‘Care to share it with us?’

  ‘I’m not even getting my hopes up yet.’

  He took a mug of tea in each hand and went up the long, crusted mound of wind-blown dust and salt to the charred hull. Wilm followed tentatively.

  ‘What’s wrong with what we’re seeing here?’ said Klarm.

  ‘There’s not nearly enough wreckage for an air-dreadnought,’ said Ilisial. ‘Only one hull, for starters – it had three.’

  ‘Where’s the other two?’ said Wilm.

  Her long face grew animated. She was the one with the answers now, and it really mattered to her. ‘If it hit the ground at high speed, tilted to one side, the triple hulls would have come apart.’ She walked away, studying the ground.

  ‘The scars where the left-hand keel hit the ground have been filled in with wind-blown sand,’ she said, ‘but you can still make them out.’ She indicated a long gouge with clusters of bones on one side. ‘The impact hurled some people over the side.

  ‘It bounced and struck again, here.’ Another gouge. ‘The other two hulls broke off, cut through the salt crust and buried themselves in the soft earth of the mound. The remaining hull hit that boulder and disintegrated, then caught fire.’

  ‘What about the cabins?’ said Klarm, who had followed.

  ‘Nothing to them. Just silk or canvas, bamboo and cord, to keep the weight down.’ She pointed to the rags and hoops fifty yards away.

  ‘And the airbags?’

  ‘Tore free. If they weren’t punctured, they would have risen for miles. They might have drifted right across Lauralin and out over the Great Ocean.’ She walked along the charred hull and came back. ‘What are we doing here, Klarm?’

  ‘Isn’t it obvious,’ said Klarm infuriatingly. ‘Get the spade, Wilm, and start digging out the other hulls.’

  ‘That’s going to take days,’ said Wilm. ‘Weeks, maybe.’

  ‘You got an appointment somewhere else?’

  Wilm began to dig into the mound. Under the crust the windblown salt and dust was soft and powdery, but it was hard to make progress because the sides of the hole kept falling in. ‘I need a shovel for this kind of work.’

  ‘There’s flat metal lying around,’ said Klarm. ‘Ilisial can make you one.’

  ‘It’ll take a day, at least,’ said Ilisial.

  Klarm raised an eyebrow.

  ‘I’ll get started.’

  The shovel tripled Wilm’s earth moving, and late the following day the blade, thrust deep, thudded into something hard. He excavated around it.

  ‘The side of the middle hull,’ said Klarm. ‘Keep going.’

  ‘What are you looking for?’

  ‘Whatever’s inside it.’

  Ilisial made herself a shovel and some trowels, and after another two days they had exposed the tops of both hulls.

  ‘Bad smell here?’ said Wilm.

  ‘What kind of bad?’ said Klarm.

  ‘Dead animal.’

  Wilm prised up boards. It was not an animal. The passengers and crew inside during the crash had been killed on impact, or had suffocated soon after, and had been mummified.

  Moving the brittle bodies was grim work, and afterwards it took ages to clear out the inside of the hull and reach the storerooms. Wilm was uncomfortably aware that their food was dwindling. What on earth was Klarm up to, and how could he imagine that it would help?

  The pantry had once contained food for more than forty people, but it was all gone – spoiled or eaten by small, burrowing creatures. The middle hull, which was wider, was much the same. Another three days passed with no hint of what Klarm was looking for. Wilm felt sure it wasn’t there.

  Then, as they broke the lock on the central storeroom and dug it out, Ilisial’s spade struck metal.

  ‘Carefully now,’ said Klarm. ‘Use your trowels.’

  Ilisial had made several, and they scraped away the soft earth to reveal a large steel cylinder, several feet across and about five feet high, with a brass tube and stopcock rising from the top.

  ‘I see,’ said Ilis
ial.

  ‘I don’t,’ said Wilm.

  ‘Floater gas,’ said Klarm. ‘All airbags leak, and air-dreadnoughts carried tanks of floater gas to replenish them.’

  ‘Not even M’Lainte could get this wreck back in the air.’

  ‘But we might make a crude air-floater out of it,’ said Klarm.

  ‘The rotor mechanisms were destroyed,’ said Ilisial. ‘And I don’t have the tools to replace them.’

  ‘All we need is an airbag, enough floater gas to lift our weight, and a basket,’ said Klarm. ‘If we pick the right wind it’ll carry us for hundreds of miles.’

  ‘How are you going to make an airbag?’ said Wilm.

  ‘All air-dreadnoughts carried spare cloth and gum and ropes, laddie. Keep digging.’

  39

  Leave Them For The Maggots

  Suddenly there were shouts, gasps and cries of horror. Skald had no idea what was wrong; whatever was happening was out of his field of vision. A woman wailed; a man groaned. A whistling sound grew ever louder until it was cut off by a distant, ground-shaking thump.

  He risked a brief glance. Everyone had their backs to him, looking north to a hill, at the top of which flames burned crimson. The thapter had fallen from a great height. It had been destroyed, denied to the enemy, and Flydd’s trusted lieutenant and best pilot were dead. It was a wonderful moment, and Skald savoured the allowable emotions.

  But had it robbed him of the chance to assassinate Flydd? He might still get the chance.

  Flydd had a brief, deadly altercation with the artisans who had checked the thapter, then ordered them away. Unbelievable! For such incompetence, Skald would have flayed the skin off them, impaled each man on a stake and left them to the predators. The people of Santhenar were soft; no wonder they had been beaten so easily.

  Flydd looked shattered, and Skald’s hopes rested on what he did now. If he boarded the sky galleon from the other side, an opportunity would never come. If he came around this side, there was a chance. No one was looking Skald’s way, and he inched his right hand down to the knife in his boot.