Rebellion: Tainted Realm: Book 2

by Ian Irvine

  “Maybe it isn’t. But lesser kinds of magery we know are dwindling. It’s time to test yours. Let’s see if the helmet has worked.”

  Tali looked into her inner eye, and for the first time in the real world she saw the coloured loops and whorls that held power. They were dull, though, far weaker than they had appeared in the Abysm. She reached to the nearest loop and drew power. Her skull throbbed.

  She pointed her right hand at the wall.

  “Not there,” Holm said hastily. “You might bring a hundred tons of iceberg down on our heads.”

  She went to the entrance and pointed at the edge, down near the waterline.

  Ice, break!

  Three feet of iceberg shattered and cascaded into the water.

  “Power and control,” said Holm. “I’m impressed. How are you feeling?”

  “My head hurts, though not as badly as I would have expected.” She shivered.

  Tali went inside and pulled her coat around her.

  “Well, you can’t expect miracles.”

  “What was the worrying question?”

  “What?”

  “You said the link between heatstone, the pearls and magery raised a worrying question.”

  He frowned. “King-magery was only ever used by the kings – and ruling queens – of Cythe. And only for healing the wounded land and people.”

  “Why is that worrying?”

  “On becoming king, every Cythian king of old made the choice to use the great power of king-magery only for healing, not for destruction – because to do otherwise would be disastrous.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “I told you, I’ve always been fascinated by both history and magery. Each king had to affirm his choice, for healing, in a great public ceremony.”

  “What’s the worrying bit?”

  “Your magery comes from heatstone, which formed from king-magery. If you use magery for purposes inimical to healing, it’s likely to damage your ability to heal.”

  “I wasn’t planning on doing much healing,” said Tali.

  “That’s all right then,” said Holm.

  “Why?”

  “I believe that, with pearl magery, you can be a destroyer or a healer, but not both. You have to choose – then keep to that choice – forever.”

  CHAPTER 35

  Holm whistled. “Has it occurred to you that you’re taking on the impossible?”

  “Every day,” said Tali. “Every hour! But what option do I have?”

  “Was your blood oath that specific? Did you actually swear to go back to Cython and rescue them?”

  “I’m not going to weasel out of it.” How she wanted to; Tali knew she wasn’t up to the job.

  “Answer the question.”

  “No, it wasn’t that specific, but it’s what I have to do. So I’m going to need my magery.”

  “Ah, yes,” said Holm. “And all the evidence suggests that emanations from heatstone created the ebony pearls – in you and your ancestors.”

  “By itself?” said Tali. “Or did Lyf have something to do with it?”

  He must have. She could not bear the thought that her family’s agony had a natural cause. Someone had to be at fault. Someone had to pay.

  “But once created,” Holm continued as if she had not spoken, “there’s a tension between these emanations and the pearls. That must be why being near heatstone causes you such pain.”

  “I don’t see —”

  “I wonder if that tension might be used to unlock the power of your pearl?”

  “How?”

  “In a nutshell – ha! – by surrounding your head with it.”

  “Wouldn’t that be painful?”

  “Agonising,” he said cheerfully. “I’m not sure I could bear to watch.”

  “Yet you’re suggesting I do it.”

  “I suggest nothing. I advise nothing. You asked for my help. I’m telling you what I think. No more.”

  “If our positions were reversed, what would you do?”

  “Our positions can’t be reversed.”

  “Just answer the damn question,” Tali snapped. “What would you do?”

  “You’re a prickly little thing, aren’t you?”

  “Especially when ugly old coots call me a little thing.”

  He sipped, refilled his cup and drained it. “A few things in life are worth the price one pays for them. Magery isn’t one of them.”

  She stared at him, mouth open.

  “No more questions,” he said.

  “Are you going to help me?”

  “Are you asking me to, knowing the likely consequences?”

  She licked her lips, which were unaccountably dry. “Yes.”

  “Then I’ll do it – for my own reasons. Go to bed. You’ve got a long and painful day ahead… assuming you survive.”

  “But I might not?” she said hoarsely.

  “I’ll do my best. I’d miss your company.”

  “But?”

  “Death is a possible consequence.”

  She woke during the night. Holm had not moved in hours. He was sitting cross-legged on his oilskins, cutting the heatstones to pieces, shaping each piece and testing how it fitted together with its neighbours.

  When she roused to see daylight streaming in, he was still leaning back against the ice wall, snoring gently. On the floor before him sat a heatstone helmet made of hundreds of perfectly shaped pieces, each slotted so they locked together like a three-dimensional jigsaw. What a marvellous craftsman he was.

  The helmet was ten feet away, yet her head throbbed. How bad would it be with it on her head, surrounding her pearl to force the gift out of it into herself? It would be agonising; it might be unbearable.

  There was no point dwelling on it; her oath must be kept. Just get on with it!

  She put on the helmet and the pain was so bad that she wanted to scream. But she could not. She couldn’t see, couldn’t hear, couldn’t speak, couldn’t move – then her senses overloaded and the pain vanished —

  “I can’t find it anywhere, Errek,” said Lyf. “What if it’s been destroyed?”

  He was searching frantically, tearing the stones out of the wall of his temple with his bare hands and breaking his nails as he did.

  “Pray it has not,” said the faded wisp that was Errek First-King. “The balance is tilting rapidly now – far more rapidly than it should – and all forms of magery are failing with it. You’ve been profligate, Lyf.”

  Lyf hurled the stone aside, checked the space where it had been, then heaved at another. “The enemy are devils. I had to make sure we won the first battles within hours. I had to make them believe we were invincible.”

  “Was it worth it? We would have won within days anyway.”

  “I hadn’t realised that pearl magery was limited; that the well could be emptied so easily.”

  “And now you know,” said Errek. “Don’t waste any more magery on the war. You’ve got to save it for your greatest task – if it’s not done soon, the balance will tilt so far that it’ll be irreversible.”

  “Without the key, I can’t even begin.”

  Too late for what? thought Tali. What balance? Why irreversible?

  “Then get the master pearl,” said Errek. “It’ll lead you to the key.”

  The pain flooded back and overwhelmed her again.

  Tali wrenched off the helmet. Her head felt as though an axe was buried in it. She rolled over, crawled out to the entrance and vomited down the icy slope.

  Holm handed her a cup. She rinsed her mouth with it and allowed the rest to run down her throat, which felt hot and inflamed, as if she had been screaming.

  “Better?”

  “No!” she croaked. “Why did you let me do such a stupid thing?”

  “You only had it on for ten minutes.”

  “Ten very bad minutes.”

  “Not as bad as they might have been. Did it work?”

  “I don’t know; all I remember is pain. But I don�
��t feel any different.”

  “Why don’t you test your magery?”

  “Don’t have the strength.”

  “Or are you afraid to try in case you fail?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “Success is built on the failures you learn from. If you’re afraid to fail, you’ll never succeed.”

  Tali pointed a trembling finger at him. “I’m getting an urge to blast every grey hair off your leathery old head.”

  “I could use a haircut.”

  She sat down, abruptly, as the memories flooded back. “I saw something.”

  “What?”

  She told him. “And it’s not the first time. I also saw Lyf and the same ancient ghost after my first blood-loss reliving. His name was Errek and he was telling Lyf what to do. Who was he?”

  “Errek First-King. The very first of the line of Cythonian kings, ten millennia ago. He’s a legend, credited with saving the land and inventing king-magery.”

  “Is it true?”

  “After all this time, who could tell?”

  “Well, Lyf was asking Errek’s advice and taking his orders.”

  “It raises many questions,” said Holm. “What balance was Lyf talking about, and why is it tilting so rapidly? What’s changed?”

  “And what’s the key he needs so badly? Is it a key to a safe? Or a secret door?”

  “When was it lost? Did he say?”

  “No; but I first envisaged him searching his temple not long after the chancellor fled Caulderon,” said Tali, thinking it through. “And that’s the first time Lyf had been alone in his temple since the Five Heroes abducted him —”

  “Two thousand years ago. So he’s looking for something hidden – or put away – before then.”

  “Which he needs for his greatest task. But what could be more important than winning the war?”

  “I don’t know…” Holm got up, went to the entrance and looked out, then came back. “But we have learned a piece of vital intelligence.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Lyf’s speedy victories weren’t due to his superior armies after all. They came because he used colossal amounts of magery.”

  “Why is that important?”

  “If magery is failing everywhere, he won’t be able to use it in battles to come. It evens things out.”

  “It explains why mine has been so hard to use,” said Tali.

  “Which brings me back to the link between your pearl, your magery and heatstone. Why would its emanations create pearls and be linked to their magery?” Holm paced to the entrance again, strode back. “Got it!”

  “Got what?”

  “Heatstone was unknown in the ancient world. So what brought it into being?”

  “No idea,” said Tali.

  “Yes, you do,” said Holm. “It was created by a great and powerful event, to do with magery, long ago…”

  “I don’t know enough about history —”

  “Yes, you do.”

  She stared at Holm. “Are you talking about Lyf’s lost king-magery?”

  “It seems the most likely answer.”

  “Are you saying that, after Lyf’s death, his king-magery sank into the earth and turned a great area of rock to heatstone?”

  “It explains the link between heatstone and the pearls, and their magery. It explains everything – and raises a worrying question.”

  “But king-magery was a vast force,” said Tali. “Far greater than any other kind of magery. So why is it failing?”

  “Maybe it isn’t. But lesser kinds of magery we know are dwindling. It’s time to test yours. Let’s see if the helmet has worked.”

  Tali looked into her inner eye, and for the first time in the real world she saw the coloured loops and whorls that held power. They were dull, though, far weaker than they had appeared in the Abysm. She reached to the nearest loop and drew power. Her skull throbbed.

  She pointed her right hand at the wall.

  “Not there,” Holm said hastily. “You might bring a hundred tons of iceberg down on our heads.”

  She went to the entrance and pointed at the edge, down near the waterline.

  Ice, break!

  Three feet of iceberg shattered and cascaded into the water.

  “Power and control,” said Holm. “I’m impressed. How are you feeling?”

  “My head hurts, though not as badly as I would have expected.” She shivered.

  Tali went inside and pulled her coat around her.

  “Well, you can’t expect miracles.”

  “What was the worrying question?”

  “What?”

  “You said the link between heatstone, the pearls and magery raised a worrying question.”

  He frowned. “King-magery was only ever used by the kings – and ruling queens – of Cythe. And only for healing the wounded land and people.”

  “Why is that worrying?”

  “On becoming king, every Cythian king of old made the choice to use the great power of king-magery only for healing, not for destruction – because to do otherwise would be disastrous.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “I told you, I’ve always been fascinated by both history and magery. Each king had to affirm his choice, for healing, in a great public ceremony.”

  “What’s the worrying bit?”

  “Your magery comes from heatstone, which formed from king-magery. If you use magery for purposes inimical to healing, it’s likely to damage your ability to heal.”

  “I wasn’t planning on doing much healing,” said Tali.

  “That’s all right then,” said Holm.

  “Why?”

  “I believe that, with pearl magery, you can be a destroyer or a healer, but not both. You have to choose – then keep to that choice – forever.”

  CHAPTER 36

  The whole of Palace Ricinus had been torn down, save for Rix’s leaning tower. The rubble had been cleared away and the land dug deep to expose the foundations of the kings’ palace that had stood here in ancient Cythe, when the royal city had been called Lucidand. Lyf had sketched the great buildings of the city as he remembered them before the First Fleet came, and given the sketches to his architects. Soon he would make a start on the restoration.

  “This is an unhealthy obsession, Lyf,” the shades of his ancestors kept telling him. “Our past means nothing to your people any more.”

  There were a hundred and six of these shades, and each, in life, had been one of the greater kings or ruling queens of old Cythe. Lyf had created them, his ancestor gallery as he liked to think of them, during his long exile as a wrythen. For centuries he had relied on them for advice and support, though latterly their advice had mostly been contrary, and he was fed up with it.

  “It does, it does,” said Lyf.

  “No, it doesn’t,” said Bloody Herrie, the angriest and most contrary shade of them all. He rubbed his red, hacked throat. “The remnants of old Cythe were extinguished when our degrado camps were burned by the enemy and you allowed the last of our people to die.”

  “Not the last – just the last of the adult degradoes. They were fatally corrupted. We had to start again, with the children. The untainted ones.”

  “Your aim may have been noble, but in doing so you wiped our past clean. You took those children and remade our people from them, but they have no history save the one you fabricated for them, in your blasphemous Solaces. Why should any of this matter to them? Let Cythe go, Lyf.”

  “I can’t!” he cried.

  The kings’ temple had been restored to its simple, ancient beauty. Yet, though every flagstone had been torn up, cleaned, and the soil for a yard beneath it had been removed and replaced, still the foul odour lingered.

  But all would be well, in time. After the war had been won Lyf would use king-magery to heal his land and his troubled people.

  “I’ll have the daily war report,” he said to his waiting generals.

  “The chancellor is playing at war i
n the south-west,” said General Hramm, “but he’s plagued by self-doubt and struggling to make alliances. We can discount him.”

  “I never discount an enemy until his head is impaled on a pole,” said Lyf. “The chancellor may be down, but he’s a wily, formidable foe. He may be making his case look worse than it is to gull us. Redouble the watch. Urge our saboteurs and insurrectionists to greater efforts. Undermine him every way we can.”

  “It will be done, Lord King. In the north-west, there have been a number of skirmishes north of Bledd. Though none to trouble us.”

  “What about the hunt for the slave, Tali, and my master pearl? Surely you have some good news there?”

  General Hramm looked all around the room.

  “Well?” said Lyf.

  It burst out. “Tali escaped from Fortress Rutherin with a man called Holm. They were pursued out to sea but escaped again, sinking most of the pursuing boats. Lizue found them in the Southern Strait and attempted to take Tali’s head in a bag —”

  “Well?” said Lyf.

  “Tali beat Lizue in combat, threw her overboard, and she was eaten by a shark.”

  Lyf reeled. “Not Lizue! She was my best. How do you know this?”

  “Her gauntling came back, eventually…”

  “Yes? Go on.”

  “The bond between gauntling and rider is strong, Lord King, and when she died in so bloody a way, the balance of its mind was broken. It turned renegade and dropped an oil bombast onto Holm’s boat. It burned and sank.”

  “It sank?” Lyf stared into empty space. Could two thousand years of planning be defeated by the malice of a deranged shifter? He had created shifters specifically to terrorise the enemy and the irony was too painful to contemplate. “What about Tali?”

  “Her fate isn’t known. The gauntling was badly injured by a crossbow bolt, and fled. I’m sorry, Lord King. The treacherous beast will be put down once it’s found, of course.”

  Lyf clacked back and forth on his crutches, struggling to breathe, then whirled and stalked to the pearls. Taking them in his hand, he sent out the call. It was not answered, but neither did he feel the painful emptiness that would signify the master pearl had been destroyed.