by Ian Irvine
Almost everyone had boarded now. Only Flydd, Nish and the two women remained on the ground. Skald recognised them from sketches in Durthix’s enemies’ gallery. The curvy, black-haired young woman was Maelys, a hero of the struggle to bring down the God-Emperor. She did not matter.
But the older woman, who walked with a limp and had wavy red hair halfway down her back, made the blood throb in Skald’s temples. Karan Fyrn! She had been one of the chief culprits in the Merdrun’s disastrous loss on the Isle of Gwine two centuries ago.
Karan, he now knew, had found a way to bring her family and two other people to the future, and six days ago she had helped to rescue Nish and annihilate two squads of Merdrun and an experienced sus-magiz. She was at the top of the Merdrun’s vengeance list, along with her man, Llian, and their daughter, Sulien, though the daughter, being unusually gifted, was wanted alive.
If he could kill Karan and Flydd, Skald would have made up for the stain on his family’s line, and even if he was killed, as was probable, he would die a hero.
‘Get aboard,’ said Flydd. ‘We’ll bury our dead somewhere pleasant, far from here.’
‘What about the enemy?’ said Nish.
‘Leave them for the maggots.’
After Nish gave the orders, Flydd took him, Karan, Clech and Maelys aside. ‘An urgent message came through earlier. The enemy have abandoned Fadd and Guffeons, and several other captured cities.’
‘I don’t believe it,’ said Nish. ‘Unless it’s a ploy.’
‘Maybe it is, but for what?’
Nish and Clech followed the guards aboard. Maelys, who was in the shade under the stern of the sky galleon, was gazing into the Mirror of Aachan again. Karan found this even more disturbing here, though it did seem to comfort her.
Flydd took Karan aside and they walked along next to the sky galleon. ‘Have you linked to Sulien lately?’
She shook her head. ‘When I try, all I get is a sense of her, and a feeling.’
‘And that is?’
‘She’s very unhappy.’
‘Well, at least she’s safe. Stibnibb is hard to reach – there’s virtually no field there.’
‘She’s not that safe.’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘Sulien has linked to me a few times since I left her there … so presumably the enemy could reach her.’
‘Only if they knew where she was – and only you and I know that.’
And Sulien, Karan thought. And she as good as told me she was going to mind-look for Llian.
Karan stopped, stepped around a puddle of congealed blood, shivered and moved on.
‘I can’t bear the stink of these scum any longer,’ Flydd said abruptly. ‘Come on.’
But as they turned back, Karan was struck by an overwhelming rage, close by –
Flydd and Karan were pacing along the nearer side of the sky galleon, talking quietly, and neither of the guards on the sky galleon were looking Skald’s way. His luck had turned at last. Another few steps and he would have his chance.
Flydd, said to be a fine swordsman, was the greater danger. Skald would take him first. As soon as they turned, Skald would cut Flydd’s throat from behind, stab Karan in the back, then run in under the sky galleon where he could not be seen from above and, if his luck held, gate home in triumph.
His mouth was so dry that it itched, and he knew dehydration would slow him. As he tensed to spring up, they stopped, twenty yards away, facing him. He could not risk it. In his current condition, lying prone in heavy leather armour, it would take four seconds to gain his feet and sprint that distance, plenty of time for Flydd to blast him down or draw his sword. Not even Skald, armed only with a knife, could hope to take down a skilled swordsman face to face.
Just another few yards. If they came within eight yards, even ten, he would attack.
They came on, but then Karan stopped, peering at the hull of the sky galleon. They took a few more steps and stopped again, twelve yards away. Skald suppressed a groan of frustration. Still too far.
‘I can’t bear the stink of these scum any longer,’ Flydd said abruptly, and turned back. ‘Come on.’
It was Skald’s best chance. He leapt to his feet, transferred his knife to his right hand, and sprinted. Four more giant strides and they were dead. Three. Two –
Karan whirled and, in a blindingly fast reflex, drew her knife and hurled it at Skald.
He was about to sidestep when his leading boot landed on a puddle of congealed blood, skidded and he fell forwards. He turned it into a lunging dive at Flydd, intending to gut him or, if he fell short, slash across the femoral artery.
But Karan’s knife found a gap in Skald’s armour and sank deep into the muscle behind his right collarbone, next to his shoulder. It must have hit a nerve because his right arm went dead, though his fingers remained clenched around his own knife.
Flydd sprang sideways but not quickly enough. Skald’s blade carved across his left hip, opening it to the bone, and Flydd staggered backwards and went down, blood pouring out of him. Skald cursed; it wasn’t a fatal wound. He hit the ground two yards away on his forearms and the knife jarred out of his dead hand and skidded away. Up on the sky galleon, people were shouting.
‘Guards, here!’ Karan shrieked.
Skald tried desperately to get to Flydd’s sword, but the injury and the dead right arm slowed him.
Karan yanked it out of its scabbard and stood over Flydd. ‘Try it!’ she grated, holding the weapon out in both hands.
Clearly, she was unskilled, and had they been alone Skald would have quickly disarmed and killed her, then finished off Flydd. But two men, one a giant, were scrambling down the ladder, and a third man, on the sky galleon, was bringing a crossbow to bear. Skald had failed.
He had to avoid the dishonour of being captured. He rolled under the overhanging deck of the sky galleon, scrabbled his way around the stern and crashed into Maelys, driving her backwards against the hull and knocking something out of her hand.
A small metal mirror with a powerful magical aura. It rang on the stony ground and he saw on it, momentarily, a big, broad-shouldered young woman.
Maelys was dazed and no threat to him. Skald put his back to the hull and frantically conjured a gate.
As the guards came running, and Karan appeared around the stern with Flydd’s sword, and bloody murder in her eye, Skald snarled, ‘I’ll be back for you!’ and vanished.
But the gate, made in such desperation and without time to visualise the destination, only carried him a couple of miles. It opened in mid-air with pyrotechnics that must have been visible for leagues, dumped him on the ground from ten feet up, and vanished with a boom.
Karan was too late. Skald opened a tiny gate, dived through it and it closed behind him.
She looked down at the Mirror, which showed the face of a strong-jawed, big-nosed woman with shoulder-length black hair. Karan picked it up, shuddering at the memories it raised, thrust it into Maelys’ pocket and helped her up. Pain stabbed across Karan’s ribs and she winced.
Flydd staggered around the stern, one hand pressed to the gash across his hip. His pants leg was saturated in blood. ‘He gone?’
‘Yes.’
‘You hurt?’
‘Pulled a muscle throwing the knife.’
Nish hurtled around the stern, along with a pair of guards. As Clech came the other way, blue and red light flared a mile or two to the east.
‘That’s his gate!’ Nish bellowed. ‘Come on.’
Clech ripped off his shirt, which was the size of a tablecloth, wadded it up and held it against Flydd’s hip. ‘Press down, hard.’
Flydd did so. Clech picked him up and ran. Karan followed, wincing with every step.
Clech had seated Flydd at the controls and was holding him upright. Nish bound the wadded-up shirt on with several turns of rope.
Flydd, who looked as though he was about to faint, took off and the sky galleon raced towards the place where the gate had ope
ned.
‘There he is!’ yelled Nish from the bow. ‘Bastard’s trying to make another gate. Quick, quick!’
Skald landed heavily, twisting his left ankle, and cursed the pain and the weakness. Karan’s knife was still embedded in his shoulder and he wasn’t game to pull it out in case it had nicked a vein. The sky galleon would be here in minutes and he only had room for one thought – he must not be captured!
How had Karan, a small woman carrying old injuries, bested him? He could not fathom it. There was something vaguely familiar about her, too. What was it? Not the sketch of her he had seen in Durthix’s gallery, something else, though Skald could not bring it to mind.
He was desperate for water now but dared not stop to gulp a mouthful. He had to make another gate, a long distance one this time, though he did not see how he was going to manage it.
He went through the steps and created the magical structure of the gate, but did not have the power to open it. What if he waited until the sky galleon landed, then drank the life of the first person he saw? No, the victim had to be close. Besides, the process wasn’t that quick; drinking lives wasn’t a defensive weapon.
Nor could he tear the knife from his shoulder and hurl it at Flydd. Accurate knife throwing required years of practice and Skald’s right arm was still partly numb.
The only honourable option was suicide, by disembowelling himself with Karan’s knife. It was an agonising way to die but better than the ignominy of capture.
Skald was pressing the knife to his belly when another possibility occurred to him, one so desperate that he was sure no other sus-magiz had ever thought of it. Could he gain the power for a gate by drinking from his own life?
Was it even possible? He had to try, because the sky galleon was closing in. But he had just begun the life-drinking spell when a desperate danger occurred to him.
Drinking a life was so exhilarating that, previously, Skald had not been able to stop until the victim was drained to a husk. What if he did that to himself? What an irony that would be. Dagog would laugh until he choked.
But what choice did Skald have? He continued the spell. It began to draw from his own life-force, the blood burned like hot metal in his veins and he sensed, as he always did, that no magic was beyond him.
Then agony seared through his liver and kidneys and other internal organs, as if they were being torn open to extract the power inside. His head began to throb mercilessly. Power surged into his arms, but his legs grew so weak that they could not hold him up. The muscles felt withered, flabby and wasted.
He slumped to the ground, full of power at one end, drained at the other. His head was such a mass of pain that he could barely remember the steps to opening a gate. And the sky galleon was only seconds away.
‘There’s the mongrel!’ a lookout yelled.
The craft altered course and raced up. Flydd was taking no chances this time. It looked as though he was planning to drop the sky galleon onto Skald and squash him to paste. And Skald could do nothing about it. He could not move.
As the life-drinking spell continued, the agony grew worse, as if he were being liquefied inside. Blood was running from his mouth and nose and dribbling from his backside.
‘I want him alive,’ said Flydd.
The sky galleon crunched into the ground only a few yards away and the giant sprang down, followed by Nish and three soldiers. As they pounded towards him, Skald folded the power he had drawn from himself into a bundle and used it to complete the gate-opening spell.
It tore him out of space and time, carried him away and dumped him, with a boom and a roar, onto the long chart table in Durthix’s command centre. A whirlwind picked up the maps and papers and hurled them in all directions.
Skald lay, bleeding from his shoulder and from every orifice, in the middle of a large canvas map of Lauralin. Durthix came running up, with Dagog.
‘Whatever he’s done to himself,’ said Durthix, ‘fix it.’
Dagog identified and cancelled the life-drinking spell, though Skald’s pain did not ease.
‘Well?’ said Durthix.
‘Thapter destroyed,’ croaked Skald. ‘Not my doing.’
‘And Flydd?’
‘Sorely wounded, but he’ll survive. I did my best … but I failed.’
Durthix and the magiz exchanged glances, then Durthix said the heart-stopping words, ‘Do it, Dagog.’
40
How Could She Stop Maigraith?
Aviel went to her bed exhausted and desperate for sleep, but it would not come. Her mind was buzzing, for this time her memory of the last few hours had not been lost. Her blending of Maigraith’s scent potion was as clear as the diamond phial.
What did she plan to do with it? It must be for some fell purpose, otherwise why the secrecy?
Aviel crept towards the salon from which Maigraith did her spying. The door was open, though it was dark inside. Aviel made out a round lens of light floating above the table, one of Maigraith’s spy portals. It was obscured now and then as she bent to glare through it at her rival.
She began to work on a spell, using complicated hand movements with a kidney-shaped stone Aviel could not see clearly. Slowly a small green shape grew in the air, like a coiled tube.
Maigraith took hold of the nearer end and pulled, gently stretching the entrance of the tube into a funnel. It looked like a tiny gate, though the other end was dark. Not the dark of midnight, though. It was completely black, like a hole to nowhere.
Aviel crept closer, her heart thudding.
A glimmer surrounding the spy portal revealed Maigraith unscrewing the cap of the scent potion bottle, though she left it sitting on top.
Very wise. Whatever wicked potion you compelled me to make, you don’t want to accidentally smell it.
Maigraith peered through the spy portal as if to check something, then moved it a few yards to the left and went back began to work on the funnel gate. Aviel knew that even tiny gates, if opened close together, could interfere violently.
Maigraith checked the spy portal again and let out a hiss. Aviel crept closer so she could see through it, over Maigraith’s shoulder. Lirriam was soaping herself in a circular bath and her lips were moving. Was she talking to herself? No, she must be singing.
She was a striking woman, her neat, heart-shaped face framed by that astounding, opaline hair. She was full-figured and curvy and young, while Maigraith was wrinkled and stringy and far past her prime. The hairs on the back of Aviel’s neck rose and she had an awful premonition.
She edged sideways until she could see the half-made gate more clearly. Was Maigraith intending to ambush Lirriam in her bath?
It must be so, and Aviel could not allow her work to be so abused, though the thought of taking Maigraith on was absurd. What could the potion be?
Aviel ran through her memories once more, mentally lining up all nineteen phials and recalling each scent, and how she had blended them. The ingredients were disturbing, the combinations more so, but she could not work out what it was. Radizer’s grimoire contained 187 scent potions, but this particular combination wasn’t one of them.
Maigraith continued crafting the tiny funnel gate, and frequently checking on Lirriam through the spy portal. She was still singing in her bath.
‘Yesss,’ Maigraith said.
The intense black of her little gate slowly changed to a deep, velvety purple. She lifted the cap off the bottle. An air current stirred Aviel’s hair; the gate was opening.
As Maigraith was about to tip the scent potion into the air stream, Aviel launched herself at her. Maigraith started at the noise and her left arm knocked the little gate sideways towards the spy portal.
The portal and gate touched with an almighty thud, a reverberation that seemed to come from a long way away, and everything in the room blurred as if ripples had passed through the solid wood and masonry, and even Aviel’s own body. Her flesh was shivering back and forth on her bones, her cheeks inflating and deflating, and an unseen forc
e drew on her eyes as if to pull them from their sockets.
Maigraith was shaking all over, her joints click-clacking, her knees knocking against the underside of the table. The spy portal was gone, while the funnel gate had grown to the size of a bucket. It wasn’t a passage to Lirriam’s bathing room, though; perhaps Alcifer’s defences had driven it away.
Through the gate Aviel saw a succession of landscapes: pasture, then forest, mountains, sea and more mountains. With another reverberating thud the view locked onto the top of a large rooftop garden, where a party was going on. No, a wedding.
Dozens of well-dressed people, young and old, were gathered around an open space on which a young couple were dancing. The woman wore a long, pale green silk gown with flowers embroidered around the hem and sleeves, and the same arrangement of flowers in her chestnut hair. Aviel sighed, for the woman was tall and slender and very beautiful, and her man, whose uniform consisted of dark blue coat and trousers with a thin yellow stripe down the sides, was exceedingly handsome.
The gate burst open before them and they sprang apart. The young woman took two steps towards the gate, staring at it.
Someone called her back. ‘Calluly, no! What if it’s the enemy?’
The groom, who wore a ceremonial sword, drew it and turned to pull his bride aside.
Maigraith let out a cry of dismay and tried to cap the little potion bottle, but she was shaking so violently that she dropped it and it broke. The scent potion was drawn in streaks across the table, atomised and blasted through the gate into Calluly’s face.
She sniffed, wrinkled her nose and wiped her face. She looked puzzled, then upset. The groom drew a folded cloth from his pocket and handed it to her, absently, his eyes still on the gate. She wiped her face again and again, gagged at the smell, then threw up.