by Ian Irvine
She climbed up and inspected the caves. The left and middle ones were just shallow niches that the wind eddied through, but the right-hand cave was deeper, with a high, sloping roof that would convey the smoke out, and it was dry and sheltered from the wind by a rock buttress shaped like the rear half of a buffalo.
‘We’ll sleep warm tonight, for once,’ she said. And protected from Rurr-shyve’s alien stares. She couldn’t possibly seduce Nish with it looking on.
Nish was shivering fitfully. ‘I don’t think I’ll ever be warm again.’ He began carrying armloads of dry wood up and stacking them for the fire.
While he got it going Maelys cut more wood with Hinneltyne’s hatchet, extending the stack in a curve so their sleeping environment would be as cosy as possible. She fetched water from the river and gathered a shirt-full of mussels, twisting them off rocks just below the water’s edge. There were no fruits, vegetables or nuts to be gathered at this time of year, though she did find green herbs in a boggy patch by the water.
Then, as the sun set, black fish began to jump near the shore and, accomplished gleaner that she was, on the fourth try she scooped one out of the air with an improvised hand net. It was a handsome fish, large enough for both of them, so she quickly gutted it, wrapped it in the herbs and took it up with the other provender to cook in the coals.
It was the best she’d eaten in months, and Nish appreciated it too; he didn’t leave a scrap and licked his fingers afterwards. She poured him tea she’d made from one of the herbs, took a mug for herself and settled back until he’d finished it. And then … No, first she needed to bathe. She’d avoided doing so for the past few days because it had been so cold, but she couldn’t bear to come to him unclean.
‘I’m going down to the river to wash,’ she said.
He continued staring into the fire, so she took the fur-lined cloak and went down to the water, immersing herself in it for as long as she could bear the cold. As she came out, Rurr-shyve lifted its head and gave her a long stare. She hastily turned her back, dried herself on her clothes, rinsed them and wrapped herself in the cloak.
It won’t work.
She spun around. Rurr-shyve was just an outline in the starlight but it was still staring at her. ‘Go away!’
He’s not for you. You know he isn’t.
‘Shut up and mind your own business.’
It is my business. It was laughing at her again.
She went up, heart thudding, jaw clenched, mouth dry. Nish hadn’t moved. She gave him a tentative smile. He didn’t smile back and her heart sank. She couldn’t do it; but she had to. After hanging her wet clothes on a length of cord stretched between two rocks, she warmed her freezing hands and feet at the fire. Her feet were blue and took ages to warm up, yet her face felt hot, inflamed. It felt strange to be naked under the cloak, and dangerous, like setting off on a journey to a foreign land without a guide.
No, Nish would be her guide. She knew from the stories she’d read about him that he’d been a gentle, loving man, though she’d seen precious little of it. She sat down beside him, though not too close.
How to begin? You must be subtle, Aunt Haga had said, though not too subtle, for men can be slow on the uptake. Talk to him, show him you like him, praise him. Haga had also explained the merits of wine in seduction, for both parties. Maelys wished she had some now.
Talk to him, but what about? It had to be something positive. After the way he’d reacted the other night she was reluctant to bring up his failed rescue at the village.
‘I’ve read your tale many times,’ she said quietly, edging a little closer and turning to face him. The cloak fell open from ankle to knee and she hastily twitched it closed, though she needn’t have bothered. He kept his eyes averted.
‘What tale?’ he said, turning to her in puzzlement.
‘The Tale of Nish and Irisis. It’s famous …’
It was the worst thing she could have said, for at the mention of Irisis’s name such pain racked him that she had to look away. He doubled over and began rocking back and forth.
Tonight was not the night, though her relief was tinged by guilt. After a while she edged closer, reached out and touched him on the shoulder. ‘Nish, are you all right?’
He shuddered and straightened up. ‘Who wrote our tale?’
‘The teller, Mindelmy. It was the last tale he wrote; he was beheaded for it. I first read it when I was a kid.’
From the look on his face, he still regarded her as one. ‘What does it say … about me, I mean?’ His eyes warned her not to mention Irisis again. ‘If you can remember it.’
‘I’ve read it so many times I could recite it word for word. It tells of your part in the last three years of the war. It’s a forbidden tale; I could have been put to death for having it.’
‘Even as a child?’ he said wonderingly.
‘Even so.’
‘And yet you still read it; kept it?’
‘Yes.’
‘You must have been a brave little girl.’ The compliment sounded condescending, though she didn’t think he intended it to be. ‘So Father has forbidden anyone to talk about my life,’ Nish mused. ‘He can’t tolerate the thought of a rival …’
‘You were a great hero of the war … and because of the way the tale ends –’ Why had she mentioned that?
He didn’t react this time. ‘You mean the promise to overthrow my father.’
‘Yes. But everyone knows it now. Would you like me to recite some of the tale?’
‘How long is it?’
‘Five hundred and ninety-two pages.’
‘Another time,’ he said, less gruffly than before.
It gave her heart. Perhaps she might be able to go through with her plan after all. Praise him. ‘You must have been brave too.’
‘I was terrified out of my wits most of the time. I’m not naturally brave at all. I often had to force myself to go on.’
‘That’s what bravery means,’ she said quietly. ‘I have to force myself too. Every minute of every day. And even now,’ she said, almost inaudibly.
His ears were keen. ‘What do you mean?’
Maelys blushed. ‘Nothing,’ she lied. ‘Everything is so very hard. This journey; finding food; the future …’
‘Tell me about yourself, Maelys,’ he said kindly.
‘There isn’t anything new to tell. I told you everything before.’
‘I don’t remember much; because of the brainstorm, I dare say.’
She went back to the beginning, telling him about her clan, though not its name or where Nifferlin was, just in case he was taken back to his father. She described the manor, her happy childhood marred by the loss of so many young men in the war, and the nightmare that followed after the God-Emperor seized power.
She paused but he didn’t say anything, so she went on to talk about her expectations once she was grown up – to marry well and run her manor, farms and orchards, and how those dreams had gradually been crushed, the clan name falling so low that all hope of a respectable liaison was lost.
‘I never gave up hope,’ she said, staring into the fire. ‘Not completely. But now …’
Suddenly Maelys felt overcome and began to weep for all she’d grown up to expect as her right, but could never have; for ending up on this dismal flight to nowhere that, realistically, could only end one way; and most of all for being forced into this deceitful position with the man she’d so admired, and even now was so far above her.
He patted her awkwardly on the shoulder. ‘Come on, it’s not entirely hopeless. We’re free, you and I, and he hasn’t found us yet. Here, dry your eyes.’
He pulled his hand up into the sleeve of his shirt and dabbed at her face with the cuff. She wiped her eyes, pulled the sleeve up and took hold of his wrist with her cold hand. His eyes softened, and for the first time she knew he really cared about her.
Do it, an inner voice urged her. It’ll never be easier than it is now. He wants you. She swayed towards him
.
‘Maelys,’ he said, holding his arms out. She went to him in a rush, raising her chin and tilting her head backwards so he could kiss her, but he moved to one side. She saw the puzzled look in his eyes as his face went past hers and he put his arms around her in a brotherly, comforting way.
It was going wrong, as she’d known it would. He didn’t desire her at all. He was just being kind. Or had he failed to get the message? He gave her a squeeze, began to draw away, and Maelys knew she had to send him a signal he couldn’t possibly mistake. She held onto him, breathed into his ear then licked it with the tip of her tongue as Aunt Haga had instructed her.
Nish recoiled so quickly that Maelys lost her balance, fell backwards and the cloak came open all the way. He sprang to his feet, staring down at her and breathing heavily.
‘Cover yourself!’ he said coldly. ‘What kind of a woman are you – you know my heart is given to another. Don’t ever come near me again.’
It was the most mortifying moment of her life. Maelys sat up, her treacherous face burning, jerked the cloak closed and nodded stiffly as Nish stalked away into the darkness. She wanted to do the same. No, she wanted to crawl into a hole and die.
She lay by the fire for ages, listening to his agonised cries echoing back and forth between the steep walls of the canyon. She couldn’t have slept if she’d wanted to, for she was too afraid it would bring on another of those hallucinatory nightmares.
Finally silence fell, so complete that she began to feel anxious about him. In this mood he might have done anything. She crept down to the river bank to make sure he was all right. There he was, sitting on a rock by the water, exposed to the biting wind, looking utterly desolate. His lips were dark – with blood?
‘Nish,’ she said softly. ‘I’m so sorry –’
He turned to her, though his eyes showed no recognition. He was too far gone. ‘Father still has Irisis,’ he rasped. ‘My beautiful Irisis, perfectly preserved in a crystal coffin, as though she’s just sleeping. She sacrificed herself to bring him down ... and I’ve got to help her complete her destiny ... ’ He cried out, then, wrenchingly, ‘I’ve got to have her back.’
Maelys’s skin crawled. He was out of his mind. She backed away but his eyes looked right through her.
FOURTEEN
Nish couldn’t think straight, for the blood was pounding in his head like a drumbeat. How could Maelys have thought he’d be interested in her? How dare she insult Irisis’s memory so?
His head began to whirl and his lover’s face appeared to him as if in a dream, but it dissolved into the recurring nightmare of the execution, followed by the unbearable horror of her preserved body in the crystal coffin. He closed his eyes but the vision grew stronger and clearer until he could even see the thread-like scar where her head had been rejoined to her neck. He screamed, over and over and over, and couldn’t stop until he began to taste blood in the back of his mouth.
It was a long time before he realised that the vision was gone. He sat down shakily, trying to focus on the reflections of starlight on the water, but saw Maelys instead, weeping on her knees, then on her back with the cloak fallen open like some cheap, perfumed strumpet.
But that didn’t fit either. The attempted seduction was so clumsy that it was clear she’d never done it before and, from the awful look on her face afterwards, she hadn’t wanted to. She didn’t care for him; she was just doing what her aunts had told her, to doubly ensure his gratitude. It would have worked in the olden days – before Irisis.
He blinked and Irisis was back, her live and dead faces tumbling over each other and sending such waves of longing and despair through him that he started screaming again, and couldn’t stop until another vision abruptly cut off both his agony and his self-pity.
This time Irisis had her back to him and was walking up to the cave. She stopped outside, the firelight lighting up her golden hair, and shortly Maelys appeared, white-faced and stumbling. They stared at each other, then Irisis put out her arms and Maelys went to her. They clung together, then turned reproachful faces to him, and Irisis walked out of the cave and vanished. She’d never been there at all. It was just Maelys, standing at the entrance, staring down into the darkness.
He plunged so deeply into his mad obsession that, when Maelys came down and stood before him, she was no more real than the phantoms he saw everywhere. He didn’t hear her speak, nor notice when she backed away, shaking her head in horror, though after she’d gone the visions slowly faded. Once he’d come to his senses, he felt calmer and more at peace than he had in ages.
Only then did he realise that he’d humiliated her in the most unforgivable way. The night grew intensely cold but Nish couldn’t go back to the camp fire. He huddled on the shore, sheltering from the incessant wind behind Rurr-shyve, sickened by what he’d become. He had to put things right but couldn’t see any way of doing it without raising Maelys’s hopes. He couldn’t bear it if she were to try again.
So he did nothing, and crept back into the cave at dawn, three-quarters frozen, silent, dead inside and cursing himself for the most craven coward of all – one who took his frustrations out on the helpless and innocent.
Maelys could not meet Nish’s eyes that day. She couldn’t even speak to him, and she was grateful for the small shield of the saddle horn between them. He tried to talk to her several times but she leaned forwards until the rotor blast drowned him out.
That afternoon she was nodding off in the saddle for the third time when Nish leaned over the saddle horn, put his hand over hers and directed Rurr-shyve to go down. It came to ground in a glade by a rivulet, where stunted trees reared leafless black trunks to the sky. She sat in her saddle, too weary to move, while he tethered the beast and set up camp.
She was half asleep when he lifted her off and laid her on the ground on her spread cloak, and she was surprised to discover that he carried her easily. He was growing stronger every day. He made tea sweetened with black honey from an abandoned hive he’d found in the trees, and handed it to her.
‘We’d better talk, Maelys.’
‘If it’s about last night –’ She still couldn’t look him in the face.
‘It’s not, except that I’m a pig and a boor and I’m deeply sorry.’
‘Oh!’ she exclaimed. ‘It doesn’t matter.’
Clearly she hadn’t expected an apology. Did she truly see herself as having so little worth – or him as being so exalted? If only she could see the worms writhing in his soul.
‘Of course it matters, but that’s not what I want to talk about. It’s your nightmares.’
‘What I dream about is my own business.’ She added pointedly, ‘I wouldn’t dream of asking you about your own.’
He squirmed, but continued. ‘It’s my business if it’s my father getting at you.’
She rocked backwards. ‘But … that’s not possible.’
‘He can do almost anything with the tears.’ He peered at her as if trying to see inside her head. ‘Especially to people whom he’s recognised as having a talent for the Secret Art.’
She snorted. ‘That’s absurd.’
‘Is Fyllis’s talent absurd too?’
‘We knew she had one before she could walk. But I don’t even look like her.’
‘Are you saying that no one else in your clan has a talent? That Fyllis’s talent came from nowhere?’
She didn’t answer at once. Such gifts were only talked about after checking that no one could overhear, or betray. ‘Cousin Cathim had a small gift. And Father, I think. I heard Mother talking about it once to the aunts. That must be why your … the God-Emperor took him. But not me.’
‘Maelys, I spent ten years listening to the guards’ gossip. Flappeter riders need a talent to command their beasts, and to hear their mindspeech. Since you can do both, you must have a talent for the Art, hidden from you for your very survival – and I think Father is using it to send nightmares at you.’
A chill swept down her back. Concealing
a talent from the God-Emperor’s watchers meant a death sentence. Even having such a talent was usually fatal and she shied away from believing him – she didn’t want to be special. Those gifts had destroyed Clan Nifferlin.
But if she did have one, what could it be? Fyllis hid the family from Jal-Nish by blocking his watchers and listeners from sending messages to Gatherer, while Cathim had been able to locate the secret wisp-watchers from their intangible wisps, but Maelys couldn’t do either of those things. To have any talent was bad enough, but to be vulnerable to sendings from the God-Emperor was unbearable. Was he trying to drive her mad, or was it something worse?
Nish crouched down in front of her. ‘You’ve got to uncover your talent, Maelys.’
She shook her head. ‘I don’t want it. It destroyed our clan.’
‘It’s for your very survival. And mine, if that still matters to you. You can’t fight Father’s nightmares unless you understand your own gift.’
‘I wouldn’t know where to begin. You’ve got to have a mentor.’ How did she know that? ‘Can … can you teach me?’
‘Me?’ He laughed hollowly. ‘Hardly.’ He began to pace in front of the fire.
Since he seemed to be finished, Maelys lay down and closed her eyes. She must have dozed, for the next she knew he was bent over her, shaking her arm.
‘What?’ she said drowsily, unwilling to rouse from such precious, dreamless slumber.
‘Did your mother or aunts give you anything, or tell you anything about your talent?’
‘No. Nothing.’
‘Do you mean they sent you out on this perilous journey armed with nothing but your wits?’
She bit down on a snappy retort. He surely hadn’t meant to be rude. ‘I had my taphloid –’
‘So they did give you something.’
‘No, Father gave it to me when I was little.’