by Ian Irvine
‘Then, what is your plan, Deliverer? Do you have one?’
Nish’s only plan was to give Monkshart and Phrune the slip as quickly as possible and make his way to the rain-shrouded plateau he’d seen in the Pit of Possibilities, but he wasn’t going to give the merest hint about that. He never stopped thinking about it, though.
‘I thought not,’ said Monkshart quietly. ‘You’d better go along with my plan, Deliverer, for without it we’ll be screaming in the God-Emperor’s torture chambers before the week is out. Go to your followers and sway them, and do it quickly, for they’re looking uneasy. Once they lose faith they’ll start to focus on the perils of following the Deliverer, and soon someone will decide that there’s more to be gained by betraying you than supporting you. They cannot be allowed to lose faith. The Defiance must either grow like an avalanche, or fail and be crushed. There’s no middle way.’
He was right. It was the only course and for as long as Nish was stuck with Monkshart he’d better follow it. Could it work? He had no idea. Nish took a deep breath and turned back to his followers. Could eight people really start a revolution? Or would they, and all who followed them, fall to his father as every other rebel had?
It reminded Nish that Maelys had seen into his father’s mind, and that he believed he was close to becoming invulnerable and immortal. He had to be stopped, every second counted and for the moment Monkshart’s way was the only way.
Nish noticed that Phrune was staring greedily at the buxom young woman, his tongue flicking across his lips. Nish felt an urge to kick his feet from under him, but he suppressed it. If he were to become the Deliverer he had to make use of whatever tools came to hand, even Phrune, though he felt cheapened by the man.
Nish looked into the eyes of each peasant in turn, then focussed on one. Not the lass with the flashing eyes, to whom he was instinctively drawn, physically at least, but the crone with the thin white hair and a face as seamed as saddle leather. Her eyes were clouded and he guessed that she was nearly blind, but they never left his face, as if she were searching for something in him. If she found it, she would sway the others.
‘Just over ten years ago,’ he said softly, so they had to stretch forwards to hear, ‘we won the war that humanity had been losing for a hundred and fifty years. And despite the conniving and treachery of some of the most powerful people in the land, we won it honourably.
‘We did not crush our enemies, thus making them hate us all the more. We made peace with the lyrinx, who had sprung from humanity in the distant past after being exiled to the void for their beliefs. We gave them their own world, Tallallame, to wrest back from savagery, and they took it and departed in friendship. The invading Aachim, sadly weakened by the folly of their leader, we gifted with the desert land of Faranda to make it bloom. Once all that was done, we sat down to plan a new and better world, for everyone.’
No one spoke; no one fidgeted. Their hungry eyes were fixed on him. ‘But in the very moment of our victory, peace and freedom were snatched from us by my father and his sorcerous tears, Gatherer and Reaper, aided by the folly of one of the heroes of the war who caused all the nodes in the world to explode, one after another.’ Brilliant, unhappy Tiaan. He wondered what had happened to her. Dead at his father’s hand, he felt sure. ‘We tried to stop Jal-Nish but we allies were scattered, slain or taken.
‘My father didn’t just want supremacy, though. He also wanted revenge and he hated my beloved Irisis most of all. She should have fled with the others but Irisis could never run away. She gave her life to save mine – the greatest gift any person can give – and remained nobly defiant to the end. When Father had her slain, I swore to endure the worst he could put me to, for however long it took. I swore to help build the resistance in her name.’
His voice strengthened. ‘I swore that one day I would return, and that together we would tear down the tyrant and all his evil works. That promise has troubled me ever since, for I am just a man, no braver than any of you. Many times I’ve wavered, and many times my courage has failed me, but the day has come and here I stand, ready to fulfil my oath. The Defiance has been formed, and blooded. The villagers of Tifferfyte, two hundred leagues to the south of here, gave their lives just the day before yesterday so we could win free.’
There was a stir of disbelief in the crowd.
‘It’s true,’ Nish said, looking into the cloudy eyes of the old woman. ‘We travelled two hundred leagues in one day, on foot, from the Pit of Possibilities at the dead heart of an exploded node of power, a place not even the God-Emperor’s Gatherer and Reaper could reach, all the way to the cliffs near Gundoe. And how did we do it? Through an unknown force; a new Art the God-Emperor knows nothing about. He told the world that he held all the Arts there were, didn’t he?’
Nish looked to each of the villagers in turn, and they nodded.
‘That’s what Father said, and he lied. Why did he lie?’
No one answered.
‘Because he’s afraid!’ Nish boomed. ‘He’s terrified that we’ve recognised his one weakness and know how to attack him.’ Suddenly Nish felt Monkshart’s curious eyes on him. Better not go any further down that path; he didn’t want the zealot to wonder about what else Nish might have seen in the Pit of Possibilities.
‘Despite what Father tells you, there are other Arts in the world, and other powers too. Yesterday we used one to walk the maze, two hundred leagues beneath the very roots of the mountains, on a path no man or woman has ever dared tread before.
‘But not alone. We were hunted all the way by Seneschal Vomix, the most feared and hated of all the God-Emperor’s lieutenants, at the head of a squad of the Imperial Militia. Now the militiamen lie dead in the maze, and Vomix fell where we came out of it. The God-Emperor’s servants can be defeated, and so can he. He will be defeated if we can just hold to our purpose.
‘Separately we’re nothing. Together we will make the Defiance into an unstoppable force that will sweep from one side of Santhenar to the other. Together we will topple the God-Emperor, destroy his evil works, and create the new and better world that we’ve been crying for since the end of the war. Together we will do this, my friends.’
Nish reached out to include them all, met the eyes of each in turn, and bowed his head. He’d never been much of an orator, and in his ears the speech sounded awkward, uninspiring; an appeal it would be easy to ignore.
But it must have had something, for the old woman clapped her hands, once, and as though they’d been waiting for her approval, the peasants let out a roar of acclamation, then rushed forwards to touch him. She followed slowly, but as her fingers met the back of his hand he sensed something in her with his enhanced clearsight.
She was more than a nearly blind old woman – she was a mover, one who could help to shape the future, his future, and it was no accident that his steps from the Pit of Possibilities through the maze – his vision of the path – had brought him out near her village.
Monkshart was talking to a grizzled peasant, perhaps the headman of the village, when the old woman turned away, stumbled and caught at Monkshart’s arm. He broke off, staring into the distance, though once she’d steadied herself he resumed as though nothing had happened.
After they’d gone, Monkshart clapped Nish on the shoulder. ‘A competent address in the circumstances, Deliverer. Your sincerity made up for your inadequacies as an orator and a trifling charm of my own made the difference. Under my tutelage you’ll improve with every oration, and before we stand on the golden steps of Morrelune you truly will be the Deliverer, in word as well as in deed. Now we must move, swiftly and unpredictably.’
The peasants went back to their village and Monkshart pressed on, following random paths the choice of which he confided to no one. Nish never went near a village, for they all had wisp-watchers and some would be secret ones, but Monkshart slipped away each time they camped, to return with more and ever more awed peasants, believers. His charisma had turned the bloody slaughter at Tiff
erfyte into a noble sacrifice and a clarion call whose echoes reached further every day.
On the second day dozens came, while the day after that, hundreds gathered to hear Nish speak and touch him if they could. By the fourth evening Monkshart no longer needed to leave the camp, for the word was spreading like an avalanche.
At the end of a week the camp was surrounded by thousands of true believers who had brought tents, supplies, weapons and some mounts, and most never went home. Nish’s hoped-for quiet march had become a noisy pilgrimage that must have been ringing alarm bells all the way up and down the east coast.
But it got worse. The pilgrims were beginning to treat him as a kind of messiah, bringing crippled children to be blessed and pleading for favours of every kind, including the kind that he longed for desperately but could not bring himself to accept – the young women whose eyes followed him everywhere he went, and whom he was constantly having to eject from his tent in the middle of the night.
Being treated as a messiah was the last thing Nish wanted, and he now realised that Monkshart had been using him all along. But what did Monkshart really want?
THIRTY-ONE
Maelys woke with such a desperate headache that, for a minute at least, she wished she had died. She opened her eyes, which hurt even though it was dark. Or had she gone blind? She remembered being hit on the forehead and Phrune coming after her, though the memories after that were fuzzy. She tried to get up but it felt as though the weight of a mountain were holding her down.
Closing her eyes, she slumped onto the muddy rock and drifted back into an exhausted sleep. Whatever Monkshart and Phrune had planned, there was nothing she could do to stop them.
The next time she woke it was daylight and her mouth was so dry that her lips crackled when she licked them. Her head felt better though. It hardly ached at all.
She couldn’t see anything but the green outlines of ferns – she was still under the shelf-like overhang. Maelys wriggled out through the ferns and was reaching instinctively for her taphloid when she remembered Phrune taking it. It had seldom left her hands since her father had given it to her. She felt a pang of loss, though she was too desiccated to shed a tear for the only treasure she’d had left. Besides, it had done its work. The image of Vomix convulsing as he desperately tried to rid himself of the taphloid would never leave her.
She didn’t quite understand that; didn’t have the energy to think about it either. Maelys stumbled out into brilliant sunshine that hurt her eyes and crept along the base of the cliff in the shade, looking for water. She was sure she’d heard it trickling earlier, and around the curve came upon a moss-covered buttress of granite, facing south, threaded with tiny ribbons of water from a seep. She lapped at them like a dog, washed her face and hands, wet her hair, and pressed herself against the surface until her gown was saturated.
Sitting with her back to the wall, she tried to work out what to do. Nish, Monkshart and Phrune must be long gone, though she couldn’t tell if they had escaped or been captured. The lush herbs and ferns along the base of the wall had been trampled flat by a host of men with big feet, the soldiers from Gundoe Citadel.
Nish was gone without ever knowing that she was alive, or what she’d done to save him. And he’d been so close. At one point she could almost have reached out and touched him.
Jil had fled with Timfy and Maelys couldn’t blame her. Using the boy against Vomix had been unforgivable, even though it had saved all their lives. And perhaps Jil had thought she’d killed Maelys, and had fled to avoid being taken for punishment.
They were all gone. She was alone and friendless. Half of her mission had succeeded, the other was an utter failure. The only consolation was that both Vomix and the sergeant were dead, so her identity was safe; and her family.
She turned back to the streaming wall and lapped at it until her belly was full, then headed down into the forest, avoiding the tracks made by the soldiers.
Going nowhere.
After an hour or two she came to a pebbly stream, just deep enough to lie in with her nose sticking out. The water was tepid and hardly cooled her at all, but it was a pleasure to scrub herself clean, clothes and all. Afterwards she tramped the banks on both sides, searching for Monkshart and Nish’s trail, but if they’d come this way they had hidden it carefully. After weaving a broad-brimmed sun hat from reeds, she continued, heading north, since the plateau of Nish’s true future lay that way.
There was no sign of winter here. The nights were pleasantly mild, and only in the hours before dawn did she ever feel cool, but the days were sweltering and unbearably humid for someone who had lived all her life in the cool southern mountains. She couldn’t imagine what it would be like here in summer.
The plants were unfamiliar too, though on the second afternoon she discovered a bramble thicket behind an abandoned cottage which held enough late fruit to gorge herself on, and fill a basket woven from dry grass. The morning after that she tickled a fish out of the river and ate it raw, even the eyes. It was flavourless and full of tiny bones that stuck in her teeth, but she was too hungry to care.
Late in the afternoon she made out a village downstream on the far side of the river. Remembering the doom she’d brought to Byre and Tifferfyte, Maelys didn’t approach it at once. She followed the river down until she was opposite the village, then sat under a tree, watching what went on there and trying not to think of her empty belly.
She had nothing with which to buy food, for Vomix had stolen her bracelet before he’d kicked her pack away into the maze. She could work for food if there was work to be had, or she could beg, though beggars were often taken before the wisp-watchers and picked up by the next patrol, for the God-Emperor’s workhouses.
Maelys had no choice. She didn’t know where to find Nish’s plateau, so she’d have to ask, which would immediately put her at risk. Besides, though she was resourceful enough to find food where it was available, and to hunt small animals, feeding herself would take most of each day. She could make rude shoes from hide when her boots wore out, though untanned leather would stink and not last long. However, she couldn’t replace her gown which, after another week of travel, would be as stained and battered as any vagabond’s. Then people would treat her like one and drive her off.
She scanned the village again. She couldn’t see a wisp-watcher from here, though there was bound to be one. However, a crowd of people were setting up trestles in a shady meadow by the water, below the high upper bank of the river. People were often more friendly on market day, at least until they’d sold their goods and drunk too much sour wine. Maelys headed for the ford.
But it wasn’t market day and no one was drinking. They were listening to someone standing halfway up the sloping bank, out of sight of the wisp-watcher. The villagers were tall, lean and dark-skinned, nothing like her, and she expected them to push her away. One or two people gave her curious glances as she edged into a space in the crowd, but they didn’t look unfriendly.
The speaker was an old woman with white hair and a leathery, seamed face, and she was concluding a speech.
‘… when the Deliverer spoke, his tale brought tears to my old eyes. He has come a long way to find us, my friends, and suffered grievously to get here, but he never faltered.’ She took a breath.
‘Ten years we’ve groaned under the yoke of the God-Emperor. Ten years he’s been killing or taking our talented ones, never to be seen again. For ten years his brutal officers have abused our sisters, wives and daughters. And for ten years we’ve had but a single hope – that his son would return as he promised to do, and overthrow the father.
‘The Deliverer has honoured us by beginning his campaign in our beautiful Campanie. Now it’s up to us to honour him. Will we rise up to support the Deliverer, or cower in our beds and allow the God-Emperor to tighten his grip on the world until all hope is lost?’
She looked over the gathering with clouded eyes, as if staring into the future, and Maelys felt a shiver run up her spine. T
his old woman, and others like her, had the power to make Nish’s campaign, or break it.
‘It will not be easy. Many of us will die, more will suffer, and we could well fail.’ Her eyes moved back and forth across the crowd. ‘Or be betrayed. Or,’ and now the chill covered Maelys’s entire back, ‘we could betray the Deliverer and the Defiance to the God-Emperor and be rewarded beyond our wildest dreams.’
Again she scanned the crowd and her eyes appeared to settle on Maelys for a moment before moving on. ‘We could betray him here and now, though how would we sleep in the jewelled beds the God-Emperor rewarded us with, knowing that we’d robbed the world of the one good thing it had left – hope? I could not! We’ve never kowtowed to authority in Campanie. We’ve never given our allegiance willingly, save to those who earned it. We’re rebels and proud of it, so let us do something, here and now, to make our children proud of us. The Deliverer needs us. Let us go to him. Let us begin the Defiance, right here. Right now!’
The crowd seemed to draw in a deep breath, and hold it. Only the old woman looked calm – no, serene – as if she already knew what their response would be.
Suddenly everyone in the crowd thrust their right arms high. ‘The Deliverer! The Defiance!’
Maelys did the same, without hesitation, caught up in the intensity of the moment. ‘The Deliverer! The Defiance!’
She lost sight of the old woman as everyone began leaping about, shouting, yelling and embracing one another, and even her. Then a big man clapped twice, and the racket broke off.
‘We have work to do,’ the old woman said hoarsely, and two men helped her down from the bank.
The people went back to the village in ones and twos. Maelys was climbing the high bank, planning to ask if she could work for her supper, when she noticed the upper curve of the iris of a large wisp-watcher between the cottages. It wasn’t pointing towards her but she hastily turned away, shielding her face with her arm, and ducked out of sight.