by Ian Irvine
He let out a great sigh. She laid her head against his chest and felt his frantic heartbeat slow.
“All right,” he said. “You deserve that much.”
She tightened her grip, closed her eyes and let her tears run down onto him.
“I should have died in the fall,” said Tobry, “but the ground had collapsed after the tidal wave and the pond of water and mud I landed in saved me – just.”
He told her all he had told Rix about that time, and how Salyk had rescued Tobry and helped to heal his injuries, then continued.
“Had I not been half caitsthe I would have died. Your healing blood had started to turn me back, but the physical need of a shifter is almost impossible to deny. Without more doses of healing blood I couldn’t fight it, and I soon began to realise that my doom had come upon me. And poor Salyk, hers too.”
“Why poor Salyk?”
Tali wasn’t sure what to think about a Cythonian soldier girl who had disobeyed her king and saved the portrait, then rescued Tobry. On the one hand, Salyk was a traitor to her king and her country, and Tali had to despise her for that.
On the other, without her compassion for a man who was her king’s enemy, and a shifter to boot, Tobry would have drowned in the corpse-filled sump into which he had fallen. He had been badly injured, had lacked the strength to drag himself out and the water had been rising.
“She was greatly troubled. Salyk longed to serve her country and do her duty, but she was soft-hearted, quite unfit for the brutality of war. And her disobedience to her king was tearing her apart.”
“Why did she save the portrait?” said Tali. She had never liked Rix’s portrait of his father. It had given her the shivers.
“Because it was a masterpiece. Ah, Salyk!” he sighed. “I’m afraid I used her —”
“You used her!” cried Tali, her eyes springing open in shock.
He managed a smile. “Not in that way. I took advantage of her soft heart and cajoled her to help me escape. The enemy were hunting everywhere for me, you, Rix and a host of others on Lyf’s list. If they’d found me I would have been killed at once.”
“How did you get away?”
“The hunted joined the hunters.”
“What does that mean?”
“The enemy use hundreds of shifters, but they have a healthy fear of them too. There’s a flaw in their design – our design, I should say. Once the madness comes upon a shifter, he – or she – is as dangerous to the enemy as to our side.”
“How long does it take before the madness comes?”
“It can be years, as in the case of my maternal grandfather. Or only weeks.”
“Do you… do you know how long you’ve got?”
“There are signs,” said Tobry hoarsely. “Unmistakeable signs.”
Tali’s bad feeling was getting worse. She felt sure he knew how long he had left, and that it was not long at all, but she wasn’t game to ask. Not knowing was definitely better than knowing.
“Salyk took me out of Caulderon as a chained shifter,” said Tobry, “one among a group of the beasts being escorted from one part of the hunt to another. It – it wasn’t a good time for me. When I was among them I could feel the shifter side becoming stronger, fighting for the upper hand, and it was ever harder to control it. Most shifters are pack animals, you see, and the pack reinforces the individual.”
“It must have been horrible,” said Tali, taking his hand.
“So horrible that I can’t bear to think about it,” said Tobry. “Save for one moment I’ll tell you about, only so you know what it was like. I owe you that much.”
“You owe me nothing,” said Tali.
“As you’ll see, I owe you everything. There were times, when my shifter side was at its worst, that I was tempted to feed on the dead. And if I had —” He was wracked by shudders. “No man could come back from such bestiality.”
Tali was silent. The image was too much to bear.
“I’m not sure how long I spent with the pack,” Tobry went on. “It might have been a fortnight. We were heading west. The enemy was using us to track down the chancellor. And you. I had to find you first.”
“But you didn’t.”
“We lost all trace of the chancellor’s party in the mountains. Apparently his chief magian lured us in the wrong direction. My quest had failed and I had to break away before the shifter madness took me. You know why I dread it.”
Tobry’s family had tried to save his shifter grandfather, instead of putting him down as they should have. They had thought they had saved him, and all the while he was stalking the family manors at night, killing the young and the helpless.
When Tobry was a boy of thirteen, his father had gone to put the shifter down, and failed. To save his father, Tobry had been forced to kill his grandfather, and it had destroyed House Lagger. Soon the rest of the family was dead and Tobry had never got over it.
“I was already suffering the first symptoms,” said Tobry. “I knew them well; I’d observed them at first hand. Yet again I imposed upon Salyk to help me. By this time she was growing ever more troubled by her own treason – fits of hysteria, nightmares, silences… and I was so deep in my own troubles I could not help her. Could not repay a tenth of the debt I owed her.”
“What happened?” said Tali. “You talk as though she’s dead.”
“She was so desperate for absolution that she confessed her treason, knowing what her people would do to her. I could not save her. I saw this gentle, troubled girl executed at Lyf’s direct order, torn to pieces by a pack of jackal shifters.” He let out a cry of agony. “It was the most terrible thing I’ve ever seen. I can’t get the image out of my mind.”
“I fled east across Hightspall, blaming myself. And in truth, I was partly to blame, because I’d taken advantage of her gentle nature. I was so full of self-loathing that I joined a wild shifter pack. I tried to take command of them and turn them away from their vicious path, but I failed. Not cut out to lead the pack,” he said wryly.
“You can’t imagine the filth I endured, the unbearable bestiality, before they drove me off. I wasn’t foul enough for them. I was on the run again, hunted by my own shifter kind, and only my sword and my magery saved me. It’s stronger now – perhaps that’s the shifter in me.
“But the shifter side was growing ever stronger, and finally I had to prevail on a hedge witch to make me this cocktail of potions.” Tobry waved at the potion jars on the bedside table. “It delays the inevitable shift to madness, though it can’t prevent it. The side effects are… unpleasant, and I have to take ever higher doses.
“When I finally reached the east, I heard stories about Deadhand. I didn’t know he was Rix, but he sounded like a man who might take me in and make use of my talents. That’s it,” he concluded. “You’ve heard it all. Now tell me that you don’t recoil in horror from the beast I’ve become.”
Tali could not speak for a minute or two. “I’m horrified by all you’ve been through,” she said at last. “But I still have my arms around you and I’m not letting go. Once again, I’m offering you my healing blood. If three doses aren’t enough, I’ll give you five. If not five, then ten. If not ten —”
“You would let me suck you dry like a gigantic leech?”
“I’m not calling you that.”
“If there were any hope for me, I’d be tempted. But after the first few days, the shifter change cannot be reversed.”
“What about healing magery?”
“No, never!” he cried, pulling her arms from around him and retreating to the other side of the bed.
“Why not?”
“Just no.”
“Well,” she said, “if that’s what you are, I can accept it. I don’t care that you’re a shifter. I want you anyway.”
He shook his head, then urged her off the bed, so gently that it broke her heart.
“You can’t have me, Tali. I’d be a danger to you and everyone around you.”
“I don�
�t care! I’m not giving you up.”
“Then I’ll have to put it in terms you can’t possibly misunderstand.”
“What’s that?”
“Were I to look on your loveliness through a shifter’s eyes,” he said bitterly, “all I would see is meat.”
Outside the door, Blathy removed her ear from the keyhole, smiled venomously, then ran to spread Tobry’s secret through the fortress.
CHAPTER 54
In one of several co-existing shafts of the Abysm, a man hung spreadeagled, trapped in aeons-long crystal dreaming. He was dreaming about the burning of Tirnan Twil and the destruction of the Five Herovians’ priceless heritage.
In one of those dreams, he saw the blurred face of a young woman who – he believed – had possessed the magery to save Tirnan Twil, yet at the vital moment had held back. It felt like a personal attack on him and had to be avenged. But it could never be.
He gave way to helpless, choking rage.
CHAPTER 54
In one of several co-existing shafts of the Abysm, a man hung spreadeagled, trapped in aeons-long crystal dreaming. He was dreaming about the burning of Tirnan Twil and the destruction of the Five Herovians’ priceless heritage.
In one of those dreams, he saw the blurred face of a young woman who – he believed – had possessed the magery to save Tirnan Twil, yet at the vital moment had held back. It felt like a personal attack on him and had to be avenged. But it could never be.
He gave way to helpless, choking rage.
CHAPTER 55
Wil’s plan had failed utterly.
After weeks of labour he had succeeded in erasing the story Lyf had written on the iron book called The Consolation of Vengeance. He had melted the book down, using trickles of heat from a perilous source near the Engine. He had even recast the heavy covers of the book, and the thirty individual cast iron leaves that made it up, and succeeded in binding them together so the pages would turn.
Now he hurled it down in disgust, for it was a lumpen travesty of the beautiful original. Wil knew true beauty when he saw it, but he was utterly incapable of creating it. And his calligraphy was worse. Though he had been practising it on the walls of the Hellish Conduit for weeks, his best attempts were hideous scrawls. He was useless at everything.
Everything save strangling Pale slaves up in Cython.
He was very good at that, very quick, when the need became unbearable and the only way to ease his own pain was to crush the throat of someone smaller than himself. Wil’s fingers, hard as the iron he had spent so much time working, closed around their slender necks and squeezed the life out of them. Though none of them was the one he wanted to squeeze. He should have done it when he was with the one, out in the Seethings. It was all her fault.
But that was not what he was here for.
He was here for the book – and the story it told. He had to rewrite the book. The story mattered more than anything. He would keep searching until he found a way.
In the meantime, Wil had something else to worry about. The Engine had developed a tiny, intermittent wobble, hardly noticeable, but it bothered him. He had tried to fix it by altering the flow of water through the myriad conduits that flowed through the Engine, but that had made it worse. It had also sent clouds of alkoyl vapour billowing up the fan cracks in the rock above, towards the Abysm.
Wil froze, staring at the cracks, his heart crashing back and forth. What if this changed the story yet again?
But then a tendril of alkoyl drifted towards him, and ah, the chymical bliss.
All his troubles went away.
CHAPTER 55
Wil’s plan had failed utterly.
After weeks of labour he had succeeded in erasing the story Lyf had written on the iron book called The Consolation of Vengeance. He had melted the book down, using trickles of heat from a perilous source near the Engine. He had even recast the heavy covers of the book, and the thirty individual cast iron leaves that made it up, and succeeded in binding them together so the pages would turn.
Now he hurled it down in disgust, for it was a lumpen travesty of the beautiful original. Wil knew true beauty when he saw it, but he was utterly incapable of creating it. And his calligraphy was worse. Though he had been practising it on the walls of the Hellish Conduit for weeks, his best attempts were hideous scrawls. He was useless at everything.
Everything save strangling Pale slaves up in Cython.
He was very good at that, very quick, when the need became unbearable and the only way to ease his own pain was to crush the throat of someone smaller than himself. Wil’s fingers, hard as the iron he had spent so much time working, closed around their slender necks and squeezed the life out of them. Though none of them was the one he wanted to squeeze. He should have done it when he was with the one, out in the Seethings. It was all her fault.
But that was not what he was here for.
He was here for the book – and the story it told. He had to rewrite the book. The story mattered more than anything. He would keep searching until he found a way.
In the meantime, Wil had something else to worry about. The Engine had developed a tiny, intermittent wobble, hardly noticeable, but it bothered him. He had tried to fix it by altering the flow of water through the myriad conduits that flowed through the Engine, but that had made it worse. It had also sent clouds of alkoyl vapour billowing up the fan cracks in the rock above, towards the Abysm.
Wil froze, staring at the cracks, his heart crashing back and forth. What if this changed the story yet again?
But then a tendril of alkoyl drifted towards him, and ah, the chymical bliss.
All his troubles went away.
CHAPTER 56
“Bitch,” said Blathy, every second time she passed Tali in the halls. Every other time she said, “Slut!”
Tali had not been to Tobry’s room again, nor had he come anywhere near hers, yet vile rumour had spread faster than the fire that had incinerated Tirnan Twil. By the time she entered the breakfast hall the following morning, everyone in Garramide save the lord himself knew that she slept with a filthy shifter. And she wasn’t taking the abuse any longer.
Tali spun around, thrusting her right arm out the way she’d done when she had killed Banj, directly up at Blathy’s throat. “What did you say?” she hissed.
“‘Slut!’ I said. What are you going to do about it?”
“I’ve got magery enough to tear your head from your shoulders,” Tali said recklessly.
“I know you have.” Blathy opened her blouse to bare her throat, and right down to her cleavage. “Go on, then.”
With her hair cascading down her back, her head tilted back and the arrogant smile that dared Tali to do it, Blathy had a barbaric grandeur that was mesmerising. She was prepared to wager her life on her assessment of Tali’s character, and take the consequences if her guess was wrong, and that made her a terrifying opponent.
One Tali could not beat. Even had the magery been at her fingertips, she could not kill Blathy in cold blood. Her threat had been empty and now her bluff had been called. She lowered her arm.
Blathy grinned savagely and turned away without a word. None were needed to reinforce her victory.
“It’s not true!” Tali cried, in a voice that rang from one end of the hall to the other. “But if it was, I’d be proud to have so brave and decent a man as Tobry Lagger as my mate.”
After that, the atmosphere wasn’t merely foul. It was poisonous.
“My chambers. Now!” said Rix, his face matching the gale raging outside.
Tali put down the potato she was peeling in the galley, washed her hands, then, avoiding all other eyes, headed upstairs.
“Did you see the lord’s face?” said a swarthy maid with an unfortunate figure. “He’s gunna give the slag what for. Put her out the door, I shouldn’t wonder. And serve the scrawny cow right.”
Tali was tempted to march back down the steps and punch the maid through the stone wall into the privies behind. She
froze in mid-step, rotated on one foot to stare her down, before coming to her senses and turning away.
“She can’t get a real man,” the maid sneered. “She’ll be doing it in the pigsty next.”
As Tali whirled, a pair of steely fingers caught her elbow.
“It’s not about you,” Holm said in her ear. “Don’t make it worse.” He drew her upwards.
“I’ve been perfectly nice to them. Why do they have to be so horrible?”
He pretended to consider the question. “Apart from the fact that you’re beautiful, clever and famous?”
“I’m not famous.”
“Notorious, then. Apart from the fact that you’re on speaking terms with the chancellor, the lord of the manor, and Lyf himself, and you’ve had more adventures in a couple of months than they’ll have in ten lifetimes?”
“I wouldn’t call them adventures. More like nightmares.”
“They seem like adventures to maids who live lives of endless drudgery, and the best man they can hope for is a one-legged veteran with hair growing out of his ears. Of course they want to bring you down to their level.”
“Are you escorting me to Rix’s chambers, or making sure I don’t run away?” said Tali.
“You omitted the third possibility.”
“What’s that?”
“That I too have been summoned, like a naughty schoolboy.”
“You never do anything wrong.”
“I suspect the chancellor would have a different view on the matter.”
She managed a smile. “Oh yes.”
They reached Rix’s door. The hungry-looking guard allowed them in. “Lord Rixium will see you in a minute.”
They took seats by the fire.
A couple of minutes later, Tobry appeared. He did not appear to have slept in days. “Sorry,” he muttered, avoiding their eyes.
“You’ve got nothing to apologise for,” Tali said, more furiously than she had intended.