by Ian Irvine
‘Something’s going on.’ Nish was studying the glows on Flydd’s power patterner. ‘Rulke’s using a lot more power than he was two days ago.’
‘Pray it’s because the bastard is finally ready to fight,’ said Flydd dourly.
But fight who? Did he know they were coming? Probably.
Skald stank of rancid sweat and old blood. And failure.
The guards paced around Rulke, never taking their eyes off him. Was Maigraith close by? Would she try to free Rulke, so as to earn his gratitude? She would need to kill Skald and his entire team first, so they could not reveal her real plan.
How could he turn the situation around? Kill Rulke and try to get away with the Source? It was tempting, because Rulke’s escapes were legendary – he had even got out of the impregnable prison of the Nightland. No, Durthix and the magiz would want him alive. Besides, Skald needed Rulke as a hostage, his passport out of here once they found the Source. Could they get away with it? Cold logic told Skald that he and his squad were going to die here.
He could hear Ghiv and the three soldiers tramping across metal floors high above, going up and down ladders, and lifting and closing hatches. Tiaan’s bare feet made no sound. She would know the Source the moment she saw it. Being a brilliant geomancer, she might even sense it.
Another spasm struck his abused guts. Utter determination had got him this far, but blood loss had gravely weakened him. He slumped sideways against the wall, able to do nothing but endure …
Time had passed. Ghiv was yelling at him.
Skald forced his head upright. ‘Y-yes, Sus-magiz?’
Ghiv’s head, with those massive butterfly-wing ears, was extended down through an open hatch above him. ‘Found it!’
At last! Skald drew more power from himself, knowing he would pay later. Or not, if it killed him. Right now, death was the only friend he had.
He rose, shaking and shivering and drenched in cold sweat. The six guards were still pacing. Rulke had not moved.
Walking was bad. Climbing the first ladder was worse. And going up the long ladder beyond it, which must have been thirty feet high, caused him such agony that several times Skald considered letting go. No, never give up!
He drove himself on and up, into a small, windowless chamber whose walls, floor and ceiling were grey, featureless metal. Tiaan was bent over a six-lobed container, a yard across and a yard and a half high, made of black metal whose surface was embossed in complex, angular patterns. The device was clamped to the floor at the base of each lobe. He collapsed into a curved copper seat, panting, and felt a hideous squelch beneath him.
Everything blurred …
When he could focus again, Tiaan was staring at him and there was an unnerving light in her eyes. Was she forming a plan to attack them? He could not think; his mind seemed to be shutting down. But at least the pain was less. A good sign – or a bad one?
‘It’s the Source,’ she said.
Skald sighed. He had begun to doubt they’d ever find it. ‘Any sign of Pannilie?’
‘No,’ said Ghiv.
Skald had a bad feeling about that. There would be no rescue. If the True Purpose was to be saved, he had to do it. ‘Free it.’
Tiaan released the clamps and gave one side of the Source an experimental heave. It did not budge. Ghiv took hold as well and between them they lifted their side a couple of inches.
‘It’ll take six to carry it,’ he said. ‘And eight to lower it down safely.’
‘Eight to lower it …’ It was a struggle to think the numbers through. ‘Then six to carry it all the way to Maigraith’s gate … One to … to help me walk.’ Skald rubbed his throbbing temples. ‘Only leaves two to guard Rulke and Tiaan.’
‘Kill him,’ said Ghiv. ‘An oath given to an enemy can never be binding.’
‘He’s Maigraith’s great love,’ Skald hissed. ‘If we threaten Rulke, we’re dead.’
‘And maybe she’s planning to double-cross us.’
Why had he gone along with her plan? Why had Durthix allowed it? Skald reminded himself of what was at stake. The Source was worth all their lives. It was worth ten thousand lives.
He lowered himself down the long ladder. The rungs were slippery with the blood he had lost on the way up. Across to the hatch and down the shorter ladder below it. Rulke was still doubled up on the floor, bound and gagged and blindfolded, and the red patch on the front of his robe was larger than before.
Rulke must not be harmed, Maigraith had said. If she found him in this state, she would annihilate Skald and the rest of his squad.
Was she nearby? He had to know, but this part of Alcifer was a confusing maze of narrow, metal-walled corridors and small compartments linked by steep steps and ladders. What had its designer been thinking? It was like being trapped in a machine.
He sent all but one of the guards up to lower the Source down, then plodded along the narrow hall to the left. He had no idea what he would do if he ran into Maigraith.
Fail and die, probably.
55
You’re A Pearl Beyond Price, Chronicler
Llian had been shadowing Rulke’s captors for more than an hour, keeping as close as he dared in the gloom and trying to think of a rescue plan, but nothing had come to him. There were far too many guards.
Then Skald reappeared, staggering like a reanimated corpse, and sent all but one of Rulke’s guards up to bring down the Source, whatever that was. Llian had to act; there would never be another chance.
He crept along a dark, narrow hall. There were hatches in the metal floor at intervals, and compartments of various shapes and sizes along the metal-clad walls. Another series of hatches ran along the low ceiling. Llian could not imagine what this part of Alcifer was for, or why Rulke needed such a vast city for himself.
Perhaps, when it was designed long ago, he had imagined it being full of his people. Now it was an empty relic. Was it a constant reminder of plans gone so terribly wrong that the Charon, in many ways the greatest of all the human species, were now just a heartbeat from extinction?
Llian peered around the corner. In a well-lit open area some twenty yards away, Rulke lay on his side on the floor, his wrists and ankles bound with thick cord. The last guard stood back, watching him. Rulke was the Merdrun’s age-old nemesis, the only enemy they had ever feared, and if Skald got him to Skyrock he would be put to death.
Llian had no weapon save the knife he used to cut up his dinner, and if he attacked the guard he would die. The only advantage he had was his Teller’s gift. Could he lure the man away? It wouldn’t be easy. Merdrun were nothing if not faithful to their duty.
Whatever he did, he had to be quick. Once Skald returned with the other eight soldiers there would be no hope of a rescue.
A feeble plan came to Llian, and at the darkest point of the hall he lifted a hatch in the floor, stood it on edge against the wall, climbed onto it and heaved up the heavy hatch above. He carried the floor hatch further along the hall and laid it down where it was almost invisible in the gloom. He came back, sprang up and caught the edges of the open ceiling hatch, and with an effort pulled himself up into the cavity. It was completely dark here, warm and dusty and still, though he could feel faint vibrations from far away.
Every Teller could mimic voices; it was part of their training at the College of the Histories from the day they entered at the age of twelve. Students, when telling tales great or small, were expected to create a unique voice, accent and manner of speaking for every character in the tale, and Llian had been one of the best.
At the age of sixteen, in his retelling of the Great Tale, The Death of Magister Rula, he had given a distinct voice to each of the 173 characters in that monumental tale. He had recreated Rula’s final, defiant speech, and her subsequent assassination, so convincingly that ugly old Wistan, the Master of the College and Llian’s lifelong enemy, had been moved to tears.
But to induce a Merdrun guard to leave his post, Llian would have to give the performance o
f his life. He prepared for a minute, put his head down through the hole, looked back towards Rulke and the guard, who were out of sight from here, and held on with both hands.
‘What are you doing, Maigraith?’ he boomed, using Skald’s deep voice and injecting a note of alarm into it. ‘Stay back!’
‘You betrayed me!’ Maigraith, speaking with barely suppressed fury. ‘You knew I wanted Lirriam. You gated her to Skyrock to thwart me.’
Llian had heard her speak many times, back in the past, though the intervening centuries must have changed her voice and he had not heard it as it was now. He made it hoarse and a trifle reedy, an old woman’s voice, but kept the precise enunciation and the hint of formality that showed it was not her native tongue. He prayed it would be good enough to fool a common soldier, a man who had only learned the basics of the common speech of Santhenar.
‘You never had any intention of letting me take the Source,’ Skald said coldly.
‘You’ll never know, Merdrun, because you’re not leaving Alcifer alive.’
Llian imitated the sounds of a magical attack by Maigraith, an echoing boom ending with a whipcrack, and a return blast from Skald, a bang and a sizzling crackle.
Llian stood up in the ceiling, jumped and landed with a thud like a falling body. He let out a cry and a grunt, waited a couple of seconds, then put his head down through the hatch.
‘Guard!’ he cried in Skald’s voice, this time injecting pain and fear into it. ‘Maigraith’s taken my secret sus-magiz’s key. She can break into Skyrock with it. I’ve got to get it back or we’re lost!’
Llian was gambling here, but sus-magizes were bound to have secrets, devices and magics that common soldiers knew nothing about, and feared. And soldiers were expected to obey a sus-magiz’s orders instantly, without questioning.
‘Guard!’ Llian bellowed, putting more pain into Skald’s voice, and a hint of terror. He picked up the heavy metal hatch, held it vertically above the diagonal of the opening, and waited.
The guard came running, then slowed and crept forwards, looking around warily in the dim light. Llian was hoping he would fall through the hole in the floor, but he stopped a couple of yards back.
‘Sus-magiz?’ he said.
Llian’s arms were aching. The guard was eyeing the open hatch. He would see nothing; the dark was absolute down below. He came forwards another yard, bent and peered down. ‘Sus-magiz, are you down there?’
Llian dropped the heavy hatch cover and the metal edge struck the Merdrun across the back, flattening him. He was hurt, and perhaps stunned where his jaw had struck the floor, and he was lying partly over the hole, but did not fall through.
Llian was afraid to get close but there was no choice. He sprang down, landed beside the guard and tried to shove him down the hole. The Merdrun’s right hand caught Llian’s ankle and heaved. He fell, one knee striking the top of the guard’s head and driving his face into the floor again.
He must have been dazed, otherwise he would have killed Llian by now. Llian pulled free, sprang and grabbed the guard’s ankles. He was heaving the man backwards to bring his head and shoulders over the open hatch when the guard kicked with both feet, catching Llian in the groin.
He doubled up in agony, knowing he was going to die. But the guard’s kick had driven his own body the other way; his head and shoulders slipped through the hatch, then his torso. His left hand caught the edge of the hatch and held him.
Llian staggered forwards, picked up the guard’s feet, holding them to the side this time, and heaved. The guard’s legs went through the hatch, but his grip held and he swung from his left hand. He was immensely strong; Llian could not have done it for a second. The guard’s right hand clamped on and he pushed himself up.
‘Like hell!’ Llian cried.
He swiped with one foot, kicked away the fingers of the guard’s left hand, lost his balance, swayed wildly and landed with his left foot on one side of the hatch and his right foot on the other. He swayed the other way, almost fell in, and by accident his boot heel came down on the fingers of the Merdrun’s right hand. Bones cracked and he lost his grip.
The guard fell a long way before he hit bottom.
Llian threw himself backwards and landed on his back with his legs handing down through the hatch. He lifted them up and to the side, rolled over and scuttled like an injured crab back to where Rulke lay, still bound but now free of the gag and blindfold.
Rulke was laughing as Llian sawed through the ropes with his table knife with one hand, while holding his groin with the other.
‘You’re a pearl beyond price, Chronicler. I thought I’d seen every ineptitude you had to offer, yet you keep surprising me.’
‘When the time comes,’ said Llian, wincing with every movement, ‘remember who your real friends are.’
Skald had checked along twenty corridors and inside more than a dozen metal-walled rooms, but there was no sign of Maigraith. He was peering down a ladder into a dark, tank-like space when he heard yelling, a distant cry and the thud of a body fallen from a considerable height. He staggered back along the dark corridors, sick with dread.
The soldier who had been guarding Rulke was not at his post. Severed ropes lay on the floor next to a smear of blood where Rulke had lain on his side.
And he was gone!
You arrogant fool! Skald thought. A man of Rulke’s skills can’t be stopped by binding him and stopping his mouth. He might be able to cast spells by wriggling a little finger, with a mumble, even a thought.
There was no possibility of getting away with the Source now.
His grossly abused belly throbbed. He doubled over, clutching his middle, but the pressure forced thick muck up into the back of his throat. He could not breathe! He choked and lumps of clotted blood exploded out of his mouth and splatted onto the metal floor, where they quivered like little brown jellies. He tightened his sphincter until it ached but felt blood dribbling out there, too. He was a wreck, not even a shadow of a Merdrun warrior now. A disgusting ruin.
‘Ghiv?’ he croaked. ‘Ghiv?’
No answer. Had Rulke taken him already?
Skald was staggering, one knee-trembling step after another, towards the first ladder when, with a groaning of enormous hinges, the squeal of metal on metal, and a shuddering of the floor beneath him, the metal walls to either side lifted, moved apart and folded away, revealing other walls, also lifting and retracting to form a huge open chamber.
It must have been sixty yards long and forty across, with a full-length balcony, a good sixty feet up, on the far side. A massive glass skylight, a hundred feet above the floor, ran down the centre of the ceiling.
And in the centre of the chamber stood – no, it hung in the air a couple of feet above the floor – a mighty construct. He recognised it instantly because it had a similar shape to the thapter that had crashed, though this construct was three times as big. A long ladder ran up the side facing him, to a closed hatch.
The construct was made of midnight-black metal, shaped into alien, impossible curves. The base was also black, but corrugated, with a cavity in the centre that glowed blue-white and radiated heat. The long front – he assumed it was the front, though Skald reminded himself that where Rulke was concerned any assumption was dangerous – sloped up steeply near the top, where a small platform was surrounded by a curved metal coaming, waist-high. Below it, a line of large crystal portholes, oval in shape, ran around the front and sides.
So that’s what Rulke had been up to over the past month – repairing and testing the construct. He must have made two of them long ago, the small one that he had used at the end of the Time of the Mirror, and a large one. And the large one had been hidden here for the past 224 years, concealed as part of Alcifer. It must be powered by the Source, and Skald was prepared to bet that Rulke was inside the construct now.
What would he do? Fly to Skyrock and try to rescue Lirriam? Then destroy the half-built tower? With such a massive craft he could knock the top of
f, ensuring that it could never be completed and ruining their hopes of achieving the True Purpose.
This was a disaster and Skald would be blamed for it. He lurched towards the ladder. He had no plan, but he had to get into the construct.
He was on the third rung, and clenching his sphincter desperately, when there came a bellow of fury, a hatch opened below the line of portholes and a Merdrun guard was hurled out. His arms windmilled as he fell, he landed on his head, kicked three times and went still. Two more guards followed, then the other six, though the last three fell as though they were already dead. Skald’s soldiers, mighty warriors though they were, must have been powerless before Rulke’s fury.
Two had survived the fall but with broken legs and other injuries. They were no use now.
The construct rose several feet in the air, shaking Skald off the ladder, but dropped and hit the floor with an impact that rattled the walls and shook ribbons of dust down from the ceiling. The great craft rose again and settled gently, the floor creaking under its weight.
The taste in his mouth was bitter. He had wasted precious power on this fiasco of a mission. He had lost Tiaan, their second-most valuable artisan slave, plus ten soldiers and a sus-magiz. And probably Pannilie as well, a senior sus-magiz who could not be replaced. But far, far worse, he had reminded Rulke as to why he had always been the Merdrun’s implacable enemy, and now he had the means to ruin their plans and their ten-thousand-year-old dream.
Skald had failed utterly and would die in disgrace, and generations of Merdrun to come would curse his name – Skald Hulni, the incompetent fool who had caused their True Purpose to fail.
What else could you expect from the son of a stinking coward?
Maigraith slipped through a tall doorway and disappeared. Aviel, creeping after her, made out a vast chamber with a glass skylight across the ceiling. She could see starlight through it, and the half-dark moon, now declining towards the western end of the skylight. The light, such as it was, would not last much longer.