by Ian Irvine
She surreptitiously tested the blade as she debated what to do. It was blunt; Phrune wasn’t taking any risks with her. Phrune was a treacherous dog who couldn’t be trusted, though for the moment their interests coincided. Could she sneak up on Vomix? Her heart began to race. Not a chance; as soon as she moved, he’d see her.
She had only one option, though it made her sick to think about using a child that way. So don’t think about it, just do it. She drew out her taphloid and called softly, ‘Timfy?’
‘Yes, Lady Maelys?’ He came across.
‘Could you touch this and tell me if you feel anything? Be careful though.’
He stroked the taphloid. ‘It’s beautiful. It feels nice.’
‘It’s a taphloid, and it’s always looked after me.’ She guessed it only affected people with an ability for the Art. Vomix had said that his aura had felt turned inside out, so what if …?
‘Can you do something important for me? Something no one else can do?’
‘Yes, I can.’ He lifted his chin.
‘Could you give this to the bad man, Seneschal Vomix, and tell him you found it?’
‘But I didn’t find it. You had it all the time.’
Maelys sighed. Timfy was too well brought up. ‘Close your eyes and hold out your hand.’
He did so. She put the taphloid on his palm and closed his fingers around it. His hand dropped a fraction under its weight.
‘Open your eyes.’
He opened his eyes, and then his fingers. ‘You just found the taphloid in your hand, didn’t you, Timfy?’
He smiled. ‘Yes, Lady Maelys.’
‘So can you tell the bad man you found it?’
‘Yes, Lady Maelys.’ He trotted off around the curve of the granite wall, proudly.
Maelys felt ill. If Vomix realised what the taphloid was meant to do he would slay the lad out of hand, but what else could she do?
To her left, Jil was staring blearily at Maelys as if trying to work out what she was up to. Suddenly the colour drained from her face. ‘Timfy!’ she called in a voice as weak and cracked as Maelys’s own. ‘Timfy, come back! Maelys!’ she hissed, ‘I’ll never forgive you!’
‘It was the only way. Do you seriously think that monster will let any of us live?’ Maelys said quietly. It wasn’t a defence, for she didn’t have one, but she owed Jil an explanation.
An agonised cry rent the air; from Vomix. Maelys hurled her cut ropes away, stumbled to Jil and began to saw at her bonds. Jil’s eyes flashed sparks, and as soon as her hands were free she began punching, slapping and tearing at Maelys’s face with her nails, then snatched the knife and stumbled around the corner.
Maelys went after her, head ringing. She rounded the bend and stopped dead. Vomix was reeling about, holding Timfy’s hand which still clutched the taphloid, and making a dreadful keening wail. The seneschal’s face was so contorted, seemingly by his agony, that the skin had torn at cheek, left ear and brow. Blood ran down in curtains, dripping off his jaw. He kept shaking his swollen right hand as if trying to rid himself of the taphloid, but his hand had locked so tightly around Timfy’s, and around the taphloid, that Vomix couldn’t rid himself of it.
Her father must have set it up to conceal her small aura, but passage through the Mistmurk had transformed it and now, when someone with a different talent touched the taphloid, it reversed their aura agonisingly. Vomix was swinging from side to side, stabbing the air blindly with his sword. Maelys caught her breath – it would take only a single blow to slay the boy. Jil was hopping from one foot to another, waving the knife but unable to get close.
Maelys had to put things right; she had to stop Vomix even if it meant attacking him with her bare hands. As she stumbled towards them, Sergeant Tink came pounding along the cliff from the other direction, shouting, but Vomix couldn’t take anything in save the deadly, tormenting device attached to his hand. He managed to open one eye, raised the sword in his left hand to plunge it into Timfy, and Maelys couldn’t get there in time.
She snatched up a broken stick, hurled it at him like a spear and for once her aim was true. The jagged end caught him in the ribs, low down. He staggered and his sword drooped.
Jil sprang forwards, hacking at Vomix with the knife. He swiped the sword at her, knocking the knife out of her hand, but the sword slipped from his bloody fingers. Jil, with a look of dreadful determination, snatched it up, raised it high and hacked off Vomix’s right hand, the one holding Timfy and the taphloid, above the wrist.
Vomix screamed thinly and reeled towards the cliff, running at it as if intending to run up it vertically. He crashed to the ground, rose with blood pouring from his mouth, nose and stump, and began to climb the crevice the sergeant had gone up earlier. Screaming hysterically, Jil prised the bloody hand off Timfy’s and flung it after Vomix. Phrune, who stood further on, clapped his hands over his ears – shrill sounds appeared to cause him pain. Jil threw her arms around Timfy, squeezing him tightly, then wrenched the taphloid out of his fingers and hurled it at Maelys. The heavy little device struck her on the forehead so hard that she blacked out momentarily.
She came to on the ground, seeing double. Jil was running for the trees, her brother in her arms. In the distance, Phrune stepped out of the shade and hurled a stiletto at the sergeant. The blade took him in the right eye and he fell dead. Maelys was lying on the damp ground with her vision going in and out of focus when she made out Vomix at the top of the cliff, flailing madly with his truncated arm as if at an invisible enemy. He stepped off the cliff, plummeted into a ravine and she lost sight of him.
Maelys couldn’t stand up, but if she didn’t hide, Phrune would kill her too. Catching the taphloid by its chain, she dragged herself to the base of the cliff, towards the undercut partly concealed by ferns. She was wriggling backwards into the low space when Phrune appeared.
He bent, gingerly touched the fallen taphloid with a knuckle, then jerked away as if he’d been stung. His eyeballs rotated in their sockets and his mouth gaped. Maelys grabbed the chain and humped backwards but, before she could get inside, Phrune put his boot on the taphloid. He crouched down, took a rag from his pocket, folded it around the taphloid and tore the chain out of her hand.
Maelys felt a physical wrench as the taphloid passed into his keeping. She felt naked without it; exposed. Was her aura now visible to Phrune? She had to get away and hide. She dug her boot toes into the base of the crevice and pulled herself backwards a hand’s width, then another.
Phrune wrapped the device in several folds of cloth which he bound on securely with cord and stowed the package in a pocket. Maelys was really frightened now, for her head and shoulders were still exposed. He drew another stiletto and reached out for her throat but his eyes revolved again and Maelys snatched the knife.
She swiped it at him then humped backwards into the undercut, which was no higher than a bookshelf. It was cool and wet. She continued crawling backwards, holding the knife out in front of her. Phrune went down on hands and knees, but he was still shaky. She slashed at his face; he scrambled backwards out of sight.
Distantly, Monkshart gave a muffled cry. ‘Phrune, Phrune!’ Shortly she heard Phrune stumbling away.
Maelys had just enough presence of mind to pull the dangling ferns back in place to cover the entrance, then laid her cheek in the mud and closed her eyes.
THIRTY
After being tied up and having his coat bound over his face, Nish found it hard to follow what was going on, apart from the moment they crossed out of the maze into the real world. He recognised it instantly, because of the sudden assault on senses that had been confused and deprived for a day and a night. Not only the sounds of nature: water trickling down rock; a bird calling in the distance, its trill ending in a whip crack; wind in the tops of tall trees. But also the smell and feel of the real world: pungent wafts of leaf oils that previously he’d only smelt in unguents from the tropical north; a humidity that was all the more stifling because he couldn’t loose
n his clothes or uncover his face; the solidity of the ground beneath his feet.
Even more striking, however, as he passed through the slight resistance of the maze boundary into bright, burning sunshine, was the sudden relief of the pressure of the maze which had been in his mind all the time.
The sergeant bound Nish and Monkshart to separate trees and ordered them to remain silent. They had no choice, being gagged so tightly. Nish was standing in the hot sun and soon tickling sweat was running down his chest and back.
Before long the sergeant came back with a dipper of water. He loosened Nish’s gag and allowed him to drink his fill, then restored the gag. To his left, Monkshart was gulping down his portion. Some time later Nish heard the sergeant and Vomix talking, and discovered that a squad of soldiers would soon be here.
He fought down panic. He must be stoic about his fate, since there was nothing he could do. His luck had run out. He closed his eyes, sagged against the bonds and managed to doze.
In battle, Nish had heard men dying in every imaginable form of violence, but the cry of agony that roused him was unlike anything he’d ever encountered. It was an agony of the soul, as if the man’s very life essence was being ripped out of him, twisted into its negation and forced back in. Shivers rippled along Nish’s arms; would he be next?
The sergeant yelled, ‘Seneschal, what is it?’ but Vomix didn’t answer. The screaming sank to a quavering moan.
A child cried out then Nish made out a woman’s hoarse voice. ‘Let him go, you brute. Let him go.’
The moaning was cut off by the thump of a sword blade shearing through flesh and bone. Nish knew that sound too. Vomix screamed, though this time it was just normal human pain. Nish heard running feet; someone grunted, then a body thudded to the ground not far away.
He wrenched at his bonds, expecting to die. Nothing happened for some minutes, then the ropes were cut and the coat lifted off his head. He was dazzled by the brilliant sub-tropical light for a few seconds, then Monkshart cut the gag and Nish looked around, blinking. A bloody-faced, mutilated Phrune was heaving a stiletto out of the eye socket of the sergeant, who lay in the ferns at the base of a granite cliff. There was no sign of Vomix.
‘I thought I heard a woman and a child.’ Nish rubbed his sore mouth where the gag had cut into it.
‘Fled, and good riddance,’ said Phrune in a thick, oddly flat voice, the sound issuing from his gashed nose as well as his mouth. He wiped the blade fastidiously on the sergeant’s shirt and stowed it in a sheath strapped to his left calf, under his trousers. ‘Come on. The troops will be here any minute.’
‘What happened to Vomix?’ said Monkshart, giving Phrune a shrewd glance.
‘He fell off the cliff, up there,’ said Phrune, pointing.
Monkshart’s gaze followed his finger. Nish’s did too. The drop into the ravine was a good ten spans and almost certainly fatal, but –
‘I’ll believe he’s dead when I see the body,’ Monkshart said quietly, rubbing his raw arms. He pulled the sleeves of his coat down over his hands, wincing. His corrugated face was criss-crossed with pain lines.
A horse whinnied distantly. ‘This way,’ said Phrune. ‘Quick! And don’t leave any tracks.’
They followed him down into the forest, being careful to leave no footmarks. Nish had an awful lot of unanswered questions but now wasn’t the time to ask them.
An hour later, when they were well away into the forest, Monkshart drew Phrune aside into a wall-like copse of trees, saying over his shoulder, ‘Stay here, Deliverer, while Phrune attends my skin.’
Nish nodded and lay on the decaying leaf litter, staring up at the sky. He was too weary to move. He heard muffled cries of pain from the copse, but must have dozed, for the next he knew Monkshart was standing over him, his cheeks gleaming with lotion, wearing a new set of tissue-leather gloves and looking just like his old commanding self.
They spent the rest of the day creeping through a forest of gigantic, widely-spaced trees festooned with vines and creepers, watching every footstep. They walked upstream or down along the bed of every stream they came to, and took extra care to leave no marks on the banks where they came out. Finally, at sunset, Phrune announced that they’d lost their pursuers.
‘Vomix was scum,’ Monkshart said, ‘But he was also the God-Emperor’s personal envoy, and Jal-Nish won’t give up until he finds him.’
‘It’ll take him days to get here,’ said Phrune, ‘and in the meantime the soldiers won’t learn anything.’
‘Why not?’
‘I used a charm to hide what happened back there. Enough to confuse minor mancers.’ Phrune drew the zealot away and spoke quietly in his ear, watching Nish the whole time. Monkshart didn’t look pleased. ‘Very well,’ he said at the end. ‘I must know what she saw down below but there’s nothing we can do to find out now. But they’ll find the servant girl and the child.’
‘I cast a temporary glamour at them too, so they’d get away, undetected.’
‘That was uncommonly big of you, Phrune. I wonder why you didn’t just slit their throats.’
‘A generous impulse, surr, since they’d saved our lives.’ Phrune smiled mockingly at his lie. ‘The girl had Vomix’s sword and wasn’t afraid to use it, and he was still at large. By the time he went over the cliff, she’d bolted with the brat and there wasn’t time to run them down.’
‘No matter. Her tale will help spread the news about the Deliverer,’ said Monkshart. ‘It’s time to put the plan in motion.’
He didn’t look like a man who’d walked a day and a night without sleep, nor suffered such bouts of confusion in the maze. He was burning with zeal again, and Nish felt uneasy about it.
‘What plan is that, Monkshart? I’m in charge, remember?’
‘Of course, Deliverer,’ said Monkshart blandly. ‘And the first part of the plan is to find a safe refuge, wouldn’t you agree?’
‘Where do you have in mind?’
‘I don’t know this land but we’re a long way north of Tifferfyte, near the city of Guffeons. I suggest we head there, and on the way I’ll try to contact our allies. Let’s put some distance between us and the soldiers, Deliverer.’
Nish couldn’t argue with that, so after a frugal meal of withered berries he fell in behind Phrune. They tramped through the night until he was so weary that he couldn’t keep his eyes open.
Not long before dawn, Monkshart and Phrune set up camp at the top of a stony ridge while Nish slumped against a rock out of the wind. They ate fat wood grubs baked in the ashes of the fire, spitting out the tiny hooked segment spines and the gritty mouth parts, drank stagnant water from a pool at the base of the ridge and finally, blissfully, wrapped themselves in their coats and slept. Nish didn’t even dream.
He was woken by whispering in a singsong accent he didn’t recognise, though it wasn’t Monkshart or Phrune. Had they been discovered already? He schooled himself to remain still. It was mid-morning and he could feel the sun’s heat through his clothes.
‘Can that really be the Deliverer?’ a youth whispered in awed tones.
‘Shh, you’ll wake him,’ said another, a young woman. ‘The poor man. He looks so thin, so tormented.’
‘The Deliverer has suffered mightily for his people,’ said Monkshart. ‘The God-Emperor treats his son as cruelly as any rebel or criminal. See how he had Cryl-Nish flogged when he was still a boy?’
Nish felt his shirt being drawn up, and there came a collective gasp as the scars were revealed. He sat up, irritably jerking his shirt down. He didn’t like his body being on public view, and especially not his whipping scars, which he still felt ashamed about. He’d richly deserved that punishment, the callow, unpleasant youth he’d been at the time, and wanted to forget it.
Eight people stood in a semi-circle around him, peasants dressed in brown homespun. Most were young – three young women and two youths – but there were also two older men and a tall but shrivelled, white-haired crone.
His ove
rwhelming urge was to snarl at them but Nish bit down on it. ‘Good morning,’ he said with forced politeness, wondering how they’d found him so quickly. If the word had got out already, his father’s troops must know it too, and the garrison wasn’t far away. ‘How did you know I was here?’
No one spoke. They looked too awed, until one of the girls, a buxom, sturdily built lass with black hair and laughing eyes, said boldly, ‘Master Monkshart came for us, surr, so we could worship –’
‘Worship!’ Nish bellowed, forcing himself to his feet and directing a furious scowl at the zealot. ‘You went down and rounded up these … peasants in direct contravention of my orders, to worship me?’
The peasants took a collective step backwards, save for the crone and the young woman. She bit her lip, but did not lower her eyes as the others had. The crone was watching him, though he couldn’t read her expression.
‘Not exactly,’ Monkshart said blandly, ‘though at the nearest village I did seek out those who believed in you.’
‘Why?’ Nish could hardly contain his rage.
Monkshart drew him aside, saying quietly, ‘The God-Emperor knows you’re at large, Deliverer, and it won’t take him long to discover where you came out of the maze. You’ve been lucky, uncommonly so, but you can’t rely on it. You’ve no choice but to begin the uprising, and for that you must have supporters. These are the first. If you act the part here, by tomorrow the word will be spreading as fast as people can walk. Faster! Within a week you’ll have a small army, and you’ll need one. It will take an army of bodies to protect the core of the Defiance from your father’s wrath.’
An army of living, breathing and disposable shields, he meant, and Nish was having none of it. ‘I’m not hiding behind anyone!’ he snapped. His earlier moral flexibility still bothered him. There had been little choice but to leave the villagers of Tifferfyte to die, but Nish felt ashamed that he’d agreed to it with so little protest. He felt complicit; tainted.