by Ian Irvine
Maelys still didn’t know how the aunts had done it. Aunt Haga had been more offhand than usual about their plans, saying only that the rimlstone was a clan treasure charged with power long ago, so it wasn’t affected by the destruction of the nodes. Jal-Nish had sent out his scriers to hunt down and destroy all such devices, but their rimlstone had been so well hidden that it had gone undetected.
Crunch. The sound, as if someone had broken a piece of slate underfoot, came from further up the slope. It must be a sentry pacing down the ridge, and he’d probably come straight past. No, it sounded like a squad of them. The whole area must be patrolled. Her quest was going to fail before it began. She would let the whole family down and confirm their worst feelings about her.
Maelys realised that she was breathing heavily but still couldn’t get enough air. Quiet, before they hear you! She tried to talk herself out of the panic, but she’d never done anything like this before; how could she elude the God-Emperor’s eagle-eyed guards? If she moved, they’d hear. If she stayed where she was they’d walk right over her. The very idea of her rescuing Nish was a joke. She’d be caught before he even got here, and what would happen to Fyllis then?
She scanned her surroundings, though it was too dark to make out more than the outline of the steep slope rising up to the endless mountains the family had climbed down over the past three days. Anyway, she’d already looked over the area at sunset. The dry ridge contained a few scanty bushes, none big enough to hide her from the most cursory search, and was littered with fragments of flat rock which made it almost impossible to move quietly. Scattered boulders and a few angular, rearing outcrops of slate were too far away to conceal her.
The footsteps were crunching down the path. Why had she waited so close to it? And why hadn’t she moved when she’d first heard them? They were only a hundred paces away and every step made her slim chance of survival slimmer. Maelys bit her finger until it hurt; it helped to control her panic. She didn’t think there was any hope but she was going to do her pathetic best. Think! Was there anywhere at all she could hide?
The rocks and bushes were too far away; she’d never get there in time, but ten or twelve paces from the other side of
the path she recalled a little shallow depression, not much bigger than a crumpled eiderdown. If she lay down in it and pulled her coat over her, it might blend into the dark surrounds sufficiently to hide her. But could she get that far, unseen, unheard?
The sentries were tramping down, not making a lot of noise but not hiding it either. And why should they? The God-Emperor’s guards acted as though they owned the world.
You’re hesitating again – go now! It was hard to force herself to action, for daring and desperate deeds were far outside her experience. Maelys took a careful step towards the path she had to cross, feeling the grit squeaking under her boots and her heart battering at her ribs, then another step. She was beside the path, and about to step onto it, when from the corner of her eye she caught a movement further up.
She froze. If she could see him, surely he would see her too. Should she run? Hide? Wait to die? Whatever she did, it was bound to come to the same thing in the end.
Maelys urged herself on. Morrelune was out of sight behind the curve of the ridge, and if she kept low she wouldn’t make a silhouette against the dark lower slopes. She stepped onto the path, feeling like a rabbit in the sights of an archer. The little dip, just a stone’s cast away, felt as remote as the moon.
She concentrated on lifting her feet and putting them down carefully, trying to make no sound, though the rasp of gravel underfoot sounded like army boots, her breath like wind echoing through a cavern, her heartbeat like pounding hooves.
Maelys had just reached the other side of the track when a cry echoed down the slope. ‘Hoy, what do you think you’re doing?’
She went rigid, one foot raised, nearly wetting herself with panic. A scream was building up and she felt an overwhelming urge to bolt, heedless of the noise it would make. She turned stiffly, like a statue rotating at a neck joint, to stare up the slope. She couldn’t see anything. Keep going, you damn fool. Never give up. Maelys edged sideways, her boot scraping across a rock, and cringed at the sound.
Boots skidded on grit and she knew she’d been seen. They were running after her; she imagined their long shining blades out, ready to disembowel her, but this time she kept going, using their noise to cover her own small sounds, and when she was a few paces beyond the path Maelys realised that she’d been mistaken. A man laughed – a bray like a donkey – and another grunted with his exertion. It sounded like two guards wrestling. It was just horseplay, for she made out a thudding blow, then a low, angry voice, one used to command.
‘Two days in the iron-toothed stocks each! And if it happens again, I’ll register your charges with the seneschal – fools! Sentry duty for our glorious God-Emperor is an honour for scum like you, and never forget it.’
They began moving down again, no more than thirty paces away now. Maelys crouched lower, lifting each foot carefully and putting it down delicately. Five steps to go; four; three; two. She gained the tiny hollow, feeling its sparse grass sighing under her boots, pulled off her coat and went down on hands and knees.
The leading sentry crested a hump just up the slope as she settled on her belly and drew the coat over her with a bare rustle. Maelys lay still, breathing into a fold of fabric to stifle her panting, striving with every ounce of will to stay calm in the face of a terror that was getting worse every second. She couldn’t take any more. Not one little thing.
The first two sentries had gone past and the next was approaching when something crawled onto her neck. It had an awful lot of legs and its feet left a tickling itch behind. She caught her breath, praying that it would crawl off again, but it continued down the side of her throat. There it seemed to disappear, only to reappear between her breasts. It had crawled down the chain of her taphloid. It felt like a centipede, and some were venomous. Maelys couldn’t do anything about it, for the next guard was approaching, some distance behind the first two, and if she made the slightest sound or movement he’d pick it up.
The centipede was now butting into her compressed cleavage, the bristles on its back segments pricking like needles. She could feel its tiny feet hooking into her skin and tugging as it tried to move forwards. Afraid it was going to bite or sting, Maelys raised her chest ever so slightly. The centipede crawled through the gap, then as she moved, it bit her on the soft swelling of her breast.
Maelys went rigid, squeezing her eyes shut against tears of pain and clenching her jaw to stop herself from crying out. It took a superhuman effort, but she managed to suppress all but a tiny squeak. The instant she made it, she went cold inside.
‘What’s that?’ called a sentry further up the path.
‘I didn’t hear anything,’ said another man, below her.
‘It was a little squeaking sound. Like someone in pain.’
‘Men in pain don’t squeak,’ said the man below her. ‘They yell. It must have been a bat. Bats squeak; and mice. Come on. I’m hungry.’
‘Light a lantern and search the area,’ said the sergeant coldly from above. He tramped down. ‘Good sentries never ignore a sign, no matter how innocent it sounds.’
This was it. She was finished. No, run, you fool! But Maelys couldn’t; she stared at the tall shadows, paralysed. A sentry unhooked a lantern from his pack, raised its glass and struck a flint striker at the wick, snap, snap. She couldn’t do anything but lie there with her whole breast throbbing, waiting for them to take her.
A stray breeze carried the smell of lamp oil to her, and the men’s sweat. She felt sick. The lamp caught, the glass was lowered with a metallic tock, and its light grew.
‘Hey!’ called a sentry from well down the path. ‘What’s going on down at Morrelune?’
‘Sentry?’ called the sergeant. ‘All the lanterns of the God-Emperor’s palace have gone out. And at Mazurhize too.’
The
sergeant cursed as if afraid he’d be blamed for it, then took off down the path, skidding on the grit in his haste. One of the men let out a muffled groan. ‘Come on!’ the sergeant roared. ‘Weapons out and eyes peeled.’
Maelys followed their footsteps all the way down and out onto the parade ground before silence resumed and she found the courage to get up, breathing heavily. She flicked the centipede out of her shirt and moved well away from the path in case someone came back to investigate.
Something had gone wrong, and if Fyllis hadn’t been caught already she soon would be, with the sentries running around and raising the alarm. The attempted rescue was a disaster; a fiasco.
She rubbed her stinging breast and grimaced. Maelys couldn’t even feel good about her narrow escape, for she’d done nothing clever nor brave. She’d panicked at the first crisis and showed no resourcefulness whatsoever. The best that could be said was that she hadn’t given up. Only blind luck had saved her, but it wasn’t going to help her next time.
Still no sign of Nish. Maelys’s fingers crept to the taphloid, her only defence if she were taken. It was driven by a small crystal at its core, and if that were forced to implode in a certain way, which Aunt Haga had explained, the reverberations should disrupt the linkage between Jal-Nish and any spies, watchers and devices close by, long enough for her to escape. Both crystal and taphloid were forbidden objects and meant her death if she were caught with them, though in the circumstances that hardly mattered.
Aunt Haga had cautioned Maelys not to implode the crystal except as a last resort, for the taphloid would help to shield her from the eyes of the enemy, at least from a distance. But more importantly, it contained a secret that would be vital when she got to Hulipont. Maelys hadn’t been told how to unlock that secret; evidently it was too risky for her to know before she’d reached safety.
She fingered her purse, which was empty apart from a golden bracelet, the only thing of value her mother had been able to give her. Its links would buy food for the long journey ahead, if she were frugal. She felt dreadfully unprepared.
The lanterns of Morrelune were still out, though Maelys could hear shouting in the distance. Her gut tightened painfully. This was madness. Her mother and aunts must have been out of their wits to think of such a plan, and she and Fyllis were going to pay for it.
Something scraped on rock, not far below. Could Fyllis have got through after all? Maelys whirled, her eyes searching the darkness, but couldn’t see a thing. She eased the small pack on her back and took a tentative step down the track. The sound came again. She moved towards it, trying to stay calm, though her palms were sweaty. The homespun trousers were already chafing the insides of her thighs. Generally she wore a gown but her mother had insisted she dress as a boy. Maelys could see the sense in that, though even with her breasts bound and her plaited hair coiled and fastened under a broad-brimmed hat, she didn’t look like one. Her figure was too womanly. She wasn’t comfortable, either; her chest hurt.
‘Fyllis?’ she said softly, though Maelys didn’t expect her sister to answer, for she wasn’t supposed to come this far. The plan had been for Fyllis to leave Nish at the edge of the paved area, then scurry the other way to meet Lyma and the aunts and escape in a different direction while Nish climbed the track to meet Maelys.
Straining her eyes, Maelys thought she could make out something pale bobbing below: Fyllis’s hair? It was just an adventure to her. Oh, to be so young and innocent again. That faint image might be the last she’d ever see of her little sister.
Maelys hesitated. She’d been ordered to stick to the plan but it had already gone wrong. Should she go down? Suddenly the lamps of distant Morrelune flickered on, surrounded by haloes from the ground mist, then swelled enormously, lighting up the God-Emperor’s palace like a golden wedding cake. If Jal-Nish had been hurt by the brainstorm, he was over it and the hunt was on.
Fyllis could be in trouble. Maelys began to creep down the winding path, trying not to make a sound, though that was impossible on the dry, gritty ground. She reached the bottom of the ridge and it was Fyllis, lurching along supporting a larger shape on her shoulder.
Maelys’s heart jumped. ‘What are you doing here?’ she hissed. ‘You were supposed to leave him –’
As Fyllis turned, Nish slipped off her shoulder and fell to the ground.
‘The spell hurt him, Maelys. I tried to shield him the way Aunt Haga showed me but it didn’t work. I couldn’t think of anything else to do,’ she said anxiously. ‘I couldn’t leave him there, could I?’
Maelys’s stomach knotted. It had all been for nothing and they’d be found within minutes. ‘No, of course not,’ she murmured, putting an arm around her sister. Fyllis should never have been put in such a position. ‘Let me think.’ She heard an uproar in the distance. The guards of Mazurhize must be recovering from the brainstorm; there was no time left. ‘Go to Mother, quick! Leave him with me.’
As Fyllis turned away, another pang struck Maelys. ‘Wait!’
She took Fyllis in her arms, sure she’d never see her again, sure that this was the end of everything.
‘What’s the matter?’ Fyllis had begun to squirm in her tight embrace. ‘Are you crying, Maelys?’
‘No,’ she lied. ‘I’m just sorry to see you go.’
‘But we’ll be together again once it’s all over … won’t we?’
‘Of course we will.’ Maelys couldn’t afford to upset her sister’s innocent belief that everything was going to be all right. ‘Off you go now – and be careful.’
‘Don’t worry about me,’ Fyllis said casually. ‘Bye.’
Maelys watched her go with such a lump in her throat that she could hardly draw breath. Fyllis’s pale hair appeared and disappeared as she darted along the ragged base of the ridge towards its end, then blurred into the night and she was gone.
Nish’s foot rustled in the gravel. Maelys wiped her eyes and bent down. He was moaning and a faint bubbling sound came from his throat. She couldn’t see him clearly but his smell was unpleasantly strong and she felt let down. Surely this helpless, filthy wretch couldn’t be the hero of the lyrinx wars, and the world’s Deliverer?
She made allowances. He’d been starved and beaten in prison, and was still suffering from the brainstorm. It wasn’t his fault. A prisoner had no control over his life.
Lights bobbed in the distance. ‘Nish?’ she said softly, going to her knees beside him. Should she even call such an important man by a nickname? No – no time for such silliness. ‘Nish, come on.’
He came upright, eyes reflecting the lights of Morrelune glassily. ‘Who – you?’
‘Shh!’ She lifted him to his feet.
He thrust her backwards, breathing in ragged gasps. ‘Go away, Father – take her – with you. Can’t be tempted – by her!’
Had he so lost contact with reality that he couldn’t tell a flesh-and-blood person from a phantom? And what did he mean by her? It sounded like an insult, as if he thought her ugly. ‘Nish –’
He bent, felt on the ground and came up with a rock in his fist, swinging it at her. Maelys ducked then, afraid he’d brain her, hit him on the jaw. It wasn’t a hard blow but he went down and began to twitch.
Horrified at what she’d done, she bent over him. ‘Nish, I’m sorry –’
‘Where – am – I?’ he said weakly.
‘Nish, you’re safe. You’re with me now. I’m Maelys.’ Safe – if only he knew!
He moaned and tried to crawl away. ‘Leave me alone, Father.’
The poor man was quite deluded. ‘Nish, I’m Fyllis’s sister.’
The name calmed him, thankfully, but it was taking too long and they were making too much noise. ‘Take my hand. I’ll help you up.’
He tried to get up but fell down again. ‘Legs – don’t work.’
The paved area around Mazurhize was suddenly lit with an unpleasant greenish light, while an eerie humming set her teeth on edge. The huge, tower-mounted wisp-watchers were talking
to the tears again. Jal-Nish must have racked them up to their highest setting and they would soon begin to scan the darkness all around. Not even a fieldmouse would be able to move undetected then.
But she couldn’t be the one who gave up. Maelys crouched down, took Nish under the arms and lifted him to his feet. He was half a head taller than her yet didn’t weigh much more than Fyllis. The poor man had been starved; no wonder he couldn’t resist the brainstorm. She gave him her shoulder and set off up the winding, gritty path again, knowing they’d never make it.
‘Where – taking?’ he said listlessly.
‘Up through the rice terraces to Cousin Cathim. He’ll help us get away.’ But all the delays had cost too much time. They should have been nearly there by now.
At the top of the ridge she looked up the dark mountain slope. The moon hadn’t yet risen and the stars shed barely enough light for her to see where to put her feet. She mentally traced her route up through the terraced paddy fields. Aunt Bugi had made her rehearse it on a rough map until she’d known it perfectly, but attempting the real thing in darkness was another matter entirely.
Maelys was used to climbing, for she’d lived in the mountains all her life, but Nish was an awkward burden to support and already her arm and back were aching. She kept moving, performing her duty to her family. More than that, it was an honour to rescue the God-Emperor’s son, the man who was to become the Deliverer, and she would not shirk it.
On she went, and up, swapping a silent, stumbling Nish from one shoulder to another as she wound through the maze of terraces cunningly built to catch what little moisture fell on these arid slopes in the rain shadow of the mountains.
After an hour or so, while taking a brief rest, she saw three trails of lights moving steadily up the slope to her left. The troops were after her and climbing a lot faster than she could. Panic made her choke until she realised that they weren’t following her at all. They didn’t know she was here. It took a while to calculate where they were heading. They were converging inexorably on Cathim’s hut and they were going to get there first.