The Fate of the Fallen (The Song of the Tears Book 1)

by Ian Irvine

  Nish still couldn’t focus on her, and finally, guiltily, he went back to the only memory that would never fade – Irisis. It helped at once, and he began to climb down into a maze of pathways.

  Preoccupied as he was, for the first few minutes he barely noticed the strange world they were trudging through. Now he looked around. A myriad of tracks, many clearly impossible, stretched away from his feet in every direction, including straight up, straight down and out to either side, tilted so that their surfaces were vertical.

  Each path moved and shifted with every step he took, though they were just transparent phantoms compared to the track he was on, which wound off into the murky distance ahead of him, clear and solid. There was nothing else, though – they weren’t in a building, cavern or landscape – just the maze of paths.

  Nish hadn’t realised that the others were seeing things differently until Monkshart, who was leading, fell to his knees, groaning and shaking his head.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Nish said coolly.

  ‘The paths! The infinite paths are driving me insane,’ the zealot said through gritted teeth.

  Nish was pleased to see that Phrune was suffering even more cruelly. Sweat was pouring down his round cheeks, his eyes were running with tears and his upper lip was shiny with mucus oozing from his nose. He swayed from side to side as he walked, mumbling a dirge with desperate concentration as if, should he forget it, he would lose his mind.

  ‘You can see?’ Monkshart was rubbing his eye. The deep, bruise-dark sockets were swollen, the left one more than the right, and his corrugated cheeks were cracked and weeping.

  ‘The path is perfectly clear to me,’ Nish said with deliberate arrogance.

  He had to take every advantage he could in the battle with Monkshart, though he wondered why he could see better than they could. Ah! His clearsight was back. Did that mean he’d passed beyond the influence of Tifferfyte? Perhaps, though his talent felt stronger and clearer now, as if it had been changed, perhaps even enhanced by passage through the Mistmurk. Was it showing him the most direct path towards his imagined future?

  ‘You’re not troubled by sickness, shooting pains or unsteadiness in the limbs?’

  ‘The only thing that troubles me is the loss of my friend,’ Nish said curtly, though that wasn’t true. Whenever he focussed his clearsight hard to locate the path, his eyes burned and he felt the beginning of an ache at the base of his skull. Could that be aftersickness?

  Monkshart ignored the bitterness. ‘Seeing here in the maze is another sign that you’re the Chosen One.’

  ‘Another sign?’

  ‘The people need signs, Deliverer –’ Monkshart’s head whipped around, his eyes rolled sickeningly, but through sheer will he managed to steady himself. ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Didn’ hear anythin’,’ slurred Phrune.

  Monkshart withdrew a small six-sided brass tube from a pouch under his arm, rotated a knurled wheel and raised the tube to his right eye, staring back the way they had come. He shook his head, whereupon his eyes rolled the other way. He staggered and had to clutch at Nish’s shoulder. Rotating the knurled wheel another half turn, he scanned their path.

  ‘Just as I thought,’ he said grimly. ‘They’re after us already. I can’t think how they got through the Mistmurk unscathed. Vomix must have smoothed the passage for them, though not even his mancery can carry them though this maze unaided.’

  ‘Vomix?’ said Nish. ‘I thought it was Father this time.’

  ‘I can read the stench of Vomix’s aura from here.’ Monkshart folded at the knees, managed to recover then blinked several times in rapid succession. ‘I can’t see how to get out. The potion, Deliverer.’ He held out a shaking hand.

  ‘I threw it away.’

  Monkshart choked, then his eyes flashed. ‘Fool, fool!’ He seized Nish by the shoulders and began to shake him ever more violently as the murderous rage took hold of him again.

  Nish choked; lights whirled before his eyes and in a flash of clearsight he knew that Monkshart was going to kill him. He kicked out vainly as he struggled to get a breath, but suddenly Monkshart let Nish fall.

  Phrune was pulling the zealot away. ‘Master, Master, what are you doing? Come away with me; allow me to soothe your torments and slake your needs.’

  Monkshart knocked him flying. ‘Not now, Phrune!’ He swayed, then with a wrench managed to take control of himself. He walked around them in a stiff-legged circle, thumping his thighs with his fists, before coming back and jerking Nish to his feet.

  ‘Forgive me, Deliverer. I don’t know what happened there. It’s the maze, the cursed maze. Why did you throw away the phial? You must have known we’d need it again.’

  Nish felt like a stupid schoolboy. ‘I wasn’t thinking, save of Maelys left to die.’

  ‘Another sign,’ Phrune said mockingly. ‘He’s a false Deliverer; a fool.’

  Monkshart was quite calm now. He quelled Phrune with a stare before turning back to Nish, looking troubled. ‘I hope you threw the phial hard into the maze where our enemies won’t find it, Deliverer. For if they do …’

  How could he have been so stupid? ‘I – I just tossed it to the side,’ Nish stammered. ‘But I heard it crack.’

  Monkshart’s eyes flashed again; his fists opened and closed. The pale gloves were torn across the knuckles. ‘Vomix will find it and he’ll recover every drop. There was enough left to treat a squad of soldiers.’

  ‘You said there was only sufficient for half a dozen people!’

  ‘A necessary lie. Your path to victory will be filled with them, Deliverer. We can’t cumber ourselves with the useless on the way or we’ll never get there.’

  ‘Those villagers were ordinary, decent human beings! People who’ve supported you all the way.’

  ‘And they gave their lives so we could get away, which is why they were there. Come on. We must make the best we can from this mess, though I don’t doubt Vomix’s troops will be on us within the hour.’

  TWENTY-SIX

  Maelys was woken by shouting so loud that it hurt her ears. A dull ache throbbed behind her temples, her back felt bruised and something sharp was sticking into her side. She opened her eyes, sending spasms of pain jagging through her head.

  It was still dark, but she wasn’t in her bed or even inside the crater, for above her she caught a glimpse of stars through rushing cloud, and in the distance she made out the outline of a cottage. As she tried to sit up, such a spear of pain went through her head that she let out a gasp. What was she doing in the village? She remembered coming up from the pit, then the confrontation with Monkshart and, vaguely, sipping liqueur from a goblet. Later Nish had been carrying her to bed. She didn’t recall anything else.

  A cold breeze whirled across her bare skin. What was going on? Her gown was up around her neck. She was naked underneath it and she tingled all over, as if prickly fingers had been trailed up and down her body. She jerked it down, feeling the hot blood flood to her face.

  The shouting grew louder; she made out battle cries, the clash of weapons and shrieks of agony. There was a strange taste in her mouth – no, an absence of taste; her tongue felt numb. Had she been drugged? Her thoughts came laboriously.

  It was cold and drizzling. Maelys was wiping her face on her sleeve when she caught a lingering, sweetly oily odour there, masking something less pleasant – Phrune! He must have drugged her liqueur, sneaked into her room afterwards and brought her up here to molest. And then, left her to die.

  A dream fragment rose up, unbidden. An abandoned stone hut, an odd, meaty smell like a butcher’s stall, and a plump shadow bending over a vat. No, it was a cauldron warmed by a handful of coals in a brass brazier, and the figure was hooking something out of it, tissue-thin and dripping, checking it with his fingers then lowering it below the oily surface again.

  The figure was disguised, perhaps by some kind of illusion, but Maelys knew who it was by the way he moved, and his smell. Phrune looked over his sho
ulder at her, the look of a jackal, then returned to the spell he was casting …

  Later he’d knelt beside her, and ever so slowly drawn up her gown to expose her upper body. In the paralysis of the dream Maelys couldn’t move to stop him. His face was in shadow but she could hear the distinctive sound of his tongue on his lips. He stroked her bare belly with one hand while with the other he was making an odd rasping noise, flicking the blade of a stiletto with his thumb. He touched the tip of the blade to her upper lip and giggled as she tried to shrink away.

  Maelys managed to shake her head. Phrune lifted the knife, fastidiously, then held her jaw and made a small, careful cut at the top of her upper lip. Thick, shiny saliva beaded on his lower lip – he was drooling in anticipation. Maelys screamed, he reared back on his heels and she lost the nightmare, thankfully.

  A rain of arrows rattled against stone roofs and walls. Someone cried out to her left. Maelys dragged herself into the shelter of the wall and managed to sit up. Her top lip was tingling. She felt along it, winced, then had to hold onto the wall at the sick realisation that followed. It hadn’t been a dream – her lip was swollen and a thin scab extended along it, exactly where Phrune had run the tip of the knife.

  She’d been quite wrong about him. His eyes hadn’t been roving over her in a lustful way at all. Phrune wasn’t a rapist or a pervert; he was a killer. Having the power of life and death over others, and using it, was what gave him his gratification. He’d been imagining the pleasure of her pain when he lifted her skin off in one piece, so as to please his master with the finest body-glove he’d ever had.

  Maelys was suddenly struck by the gaunt face of the young woman, Ganni, who had appealed to Monkshart as they’d entered the village.

  ‘Surr,’ Ganni had wept, ‘it came again last night. It took Milli and we can’t find her anywhere. I’m so afraid.’

  And Monkshart had brushed her off. ‘Phrune will deal with it.’

  No wonder the villagers looked so haunted. They were trapped here by Monkshart’s halo of protection and mesmerised by his tales of the Deliverer coming to save them, yet whenever Monkshart needed a new body-glove Phrune stalked them in the darkness for their skins.

  But Monkshart was a huge man, so how would the skins fit? Phrune’s Arts must ensure that they were elastic enough to stretch over him, even from people as little as her.

  Another fragment of Maelys’s nightmare: something had interrupted Phrune and he wasn’t happy about it, for he’d thrown her over his shoulder and raced down a rough, stony path, cursing all the way. She didn’t remember anything else. How long had passed? Long enough for the damp chill of the village to seep into her. She looked around warily in case he was still lurking nearby, but couldn’t see anyone. No, he wouldn’t risk his skin in a battle that could only end with the village being wiped out. He’d be making his escape by now.

  Clinging onto a low stone wall, Maelys pulled herself to her feet. Her head hurt so much that she could hardly think. Something whistled overhead; this time it sounded like a crossbow bolt. Dropping down, she squinted though a gap in the stones. She was just inside the wall on the downhill side of the village. Further down the slope she saw hundreds of lanterns and the moving shadows of the army. To her left a handful of villagers were fighting three armoured soldiers, hacking at them with hoes and scythes, though none of their blows were getting through.

  A surgical blow took the arm off a yellow-haired villager, a measured thrust skewered him through the belly and he collapsed, screaming. Maelys hastily turned away, ducked down and began to creep up between the houses, looking for the path to the crater. As she rounded the wall of a tumble-down cottage she stumbled into five or six villagers. ‘Come on,’ she hissed. ‘You can’t fight an army.’

  ‘We have always been prepared to die for the Deliverer, Lady Maelys,’ said a small, gaunt man with a white wisp of beard on his chin. One eye glinted as it caught a lantern’s reflection. ‘And if you were a true believer you would die with us, to give him his chance.’

  ‘But I don’t want to die,’ she said softly.

  ‘Then run for your life and you might save it, though you’ll regret it later.’ He turned away scornfully and the others turned with him, proudly shouldering their scythes and mattocks. The poor fools. She wanted to scream the truth at them but knew they wouldn’t believe her. They were too deeply in Monkshart’s thrall.

  She encountered another pair of villagers beyond the next house, but they spoke just as fervently; after that she didn’t try to persuade anyone. She had a higher duty – to her family.

  Something whirred high in the air. Maelys looked up, dreading that it was a flappeter, but the drizzle was turning to rain and she couldn’t see anything for cloud. It hadn’t sounded like a flappeter though. It had sounded much bigger.

  Behind her a flash of light lit up the whole village, accompanied by a crack-boom that shook the ground. The wall of the cottage beside her collapsed suddenly and she had to leap sideways to avoid the tumbling stones. Further down, a woman screamed, high-pitched and tremulous.

  Maelys looked back and wished she hadn’t, for soldiers were swarming through a breach in the wall, their beetle-shell armour shiny in the light from a burning house. The villagers whacked uselessly at them with their agricultural tools and were cut down. If she didn’t get moving she would suffer the same fate.

  Maelys took off, which made her head throb even more cruelly, and had just lurched around the corner of the highest cottage when she ran into someone in the dark, knocking them off their feet. ‘Sorry!’ she said instinctively.

  ‘Lady Maelys?’

  ‘Jil? What are you doing here?’

  ‘I live here,’ she said simply.

  Maelys made her out now. Jil picked herself up, and then a child – her little brother.

  ‘But you’re not planning to die for the Deliverer.’ Maelys remembered that much. ‘Come on.’ She turned towards the crater path, and Jil followed.

  ‘There’s no way out for me, Lady Maelys,’ Jil said so softly that Maelys barely heard her over the racket of battle, the crackle of burning cottages and the ominous whirring from above. ‘But …’ Jil pushed the boy at her. ‘I risked everything for you. Please … take Timfy to safety. He’s a good boy. He’ll serve you well.’

  Maelys took the boy, who clung to her, still half-asleep. He was thin, like his sister, and small, yet heavy in her arms. ‘Where’s Nish?’

  ‘Gone, Lady Maelys. With Monkshart and Phrune.’

  Her heart lurched. Did she truly mean so little to Nish? ‘Gone where?’

  ‘Down to the secret way out.’

  ‘What secret way out?’

  ‘I don’t know. I heard them talking about it after Nish carried you to bed.’

  ‘Hurry!’ Maelys began to walk faster, though Timfy was growing very heavy and she felt oddly weak, as if the sleep potion had leached all strength out of her.

  ‘I dare not, Lady Maelys. Monkshart –’

  ‘Are you more afraid of Monkshart than you are of dying here?’

  ‘Of course, Lady Maelys.’

  Perhaps that’s what had happened to the big brother Jil had so looked up to. Had Phrune taken his skin? Maelys’s arms came out in goose pimples. What was she supposed to do if they did come upon Monkshart, Phrune and Nish? She never wanted to see Phrune again. She couldn’t deal with such sick malevolence, but she had to find a way.

  The whirring sounded again and something huge burst out of the mist above the village with a blast of chilly air. The craft was so gigantic that Maelys couldn’t take it all in at once; couldn’t believe in it. She’d never seen such a thing before, because she’d been too dazed to see the one that had followed them to Tifferfyte.

  It had to be an air-dreadnought, the most fearsome craft in the world. A bronze-sheathed vessel roughly the shape of a longboat, three spans wide and fifteen long, was suspended from airbags so large that she could only see their lower curves through the streaming cloud
. The airbags were held in position by a maze of rigging. Ropes dangling from the sides and bow of the vessel each held five clinging soldiers, ready to leap to ground. They wore the armour of the God-Emperor’s Imperial Militia.

  Jil made an incoherent sound in her throat. Maelys pushed Timfy into her arms and cried, ‘Come on. Run!’

  She bolted up towards the rim of the crater and, after a brief hesitation, Jil followed. Maelys looked back as they reached the edge. The Imperial Militia were dropping from the swaying ropes like shining fruit, some falling into a crouch to level their crossbows, others already running as they landed.

  Jil came level with Maelys, caught her with her free hand and dragged her over the edge onto the narrow glassy path, the shrieks of the dying ringing in her ears. Jil’s sandals slipped and she wobbled dangerously, but found her footing and headed down, still carrying her brother, moving faster than Maelys would have dared. She wasn’t halfway to the pavilion when the whirring became an echoing roar and the air-dreadnought appeared above the crater, so low that its keel scraped the rim.

  ‘Stop, girl with the black hair!’ The voice sent shudders up her back – Vomix again. ‘Stop or you’ll be shot.’

  Putting her arm across her face to avoid being recognised, she stumbled down.

  A crossbow bolt caromed off the wall above her head, filling the air with powdered glass. She broke into a trot, her bare feet giving her a sounder grip this time. Another shot whizzed past to her left. Fortunately, shooting down at such a steep angle in the gloom would be tricky.

  The pavilion lay just ahead. Maelys sprang between the columns into the welcoming darkness, skidding halfway across before she came to a halt. Jil was on the other side, holding her brother, who was squirming in her arms.