by Ian Irvine
‘And there we’ll climb the Tower of a Thousand Steps where, if you dare, you may put that question to the Numinator.’
FORTY-FIVE
Zham had appeared at the door but did not interrupt. Nish shivered at Flydd’s words, and Maelys wondered what he knew that she did not.
‘What’s the Numinator?’ she said.
‘I don’t know,’ said Nish, ‘and I’m not sure I want to.’
‘Nish, if you know something, can’t you just say so?’
‘No one knows about the Numinator, Maelys,’ said Flydd. ‘Not even the head of the Council of Scrutators, when it was the most powerful body in the world, could say whether the Numinator was man, woman, beast or alien, or what its purpose was. We knew only that the Council answered to the Numinator which had created it, and how savagely it punished all who tried to pry into its affairs.’
‘How come it hasn’t taken down the God-Emperor, then?’ said Nish. ‘Or he it, if Father truly is all-powerful?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Flydd. ‘Perhaps he has. Or perhaps they’ve reached some accommodation; or a stalemate.’
‘Either way, it’s been very quiet,’ said Nish.
‘Everything about the Numinator has been kept quiet; I doubt that forty people, living or dead, have ever heard the name.’
‘So even if we succeed in all these impossible challenges,’ said Maelys, ‘and reach the Tower of a Thousand Steps on the Island of Noom, the Numinator could slay us out of hand?’
‘He, she or it could.’ Flydd was staring into space again. ‘But the Numinator might also have been hurt by the destruction of the nodes; perhaps even humbled.’ A vengeful smile crept across his face, and Maelys shuddered. He had depths she couldn’t imagine.
He snapped back to the present. ‘There’s no time for speculation. You’ve required me to take renewal, and I will. The preparations are arduous, the after-effects long and brutal, and we’ll be undone if Jal-Nish arrives when I’m still laid low with aftersickness. It’s late. What news from the watch, Zham?’
‘They’re not waiting until dawn, Mr Xervish, surr,’ said Zham. ‘There’s movement at the camp fires and a line of torches around the south-east cleft.’
Flydd cursed. ‘How long do you think they’ll take?’
‘It took us eight hours in daylight, not counting rest stops. Even his most reckless climbers couldn’t do it in under ten hours at night. Though an advance guard might already be on their way.’
‘I dare say they are, though he won’t attack until he’s got a strong force in place,’ said Flydd. ‘Jal-Nish knows that Nish came here to meet one of his great enemies. He’s probably guessed that it’s me and knows I’m not weaponless. He won’t want to lose the element of surprise by sending a handful of scouts who could be destroyed with a single blast.’
‘Could you destroy them with a single blast?’ said Maelys, remembering tales of the great mancers of olden times. And she’d taken him on without a thought.
‘In my present state I’d be hard-pressed to stop a one-legged tortoise, but fear makes your enemies greater, and Jal-Nish has always feared me.’
‘Let’s say we’ve got six hours, just to be safe,’ said Nish. ‘Can you work the renewal spell in that time, Xervish, and recover from it?’
Flydd’s eyes went to the grimoires and spell books on his rudely carved bookshelf. ‘I have no idea – I haven’t done it before.’
‘But you do know how?’
‘Well – I’ve seen it done. As a young man, not yet out of prenticeship, I assisted my master to take renewal.’
‘How did it go?’ asked Maelys.
‘It took us prentices a week to scrape his organs off the ceiling.’
He sat down, staring at the rush-strewn floor between his feet, breathing heavily. No one spoke. You could die just as horribly, Maelys thought, and I forced you into it. She wanted to stop him, but backing out now would have been cowardice, so she dug her nails into her palms and waited.
Finally Flydd raised his head. ‘Nish, the four ways must be watched, and since there are only three of you, one will have to run back and forth.’
‘There’s four of us, Xervish.’
‘But to cast the spell I require an assistant; and to watch over me while it takes its painful course, an observer. And since Maelys was so kind as to urge renewal on me, I choose her.
‘It’s no less dangerous than guarding the ways up, Maelys,’ he said quickly. ‘Don’t think for a minute I’m offering you the easy alternative because you’re a girl. I’ve chosen you because you have healing skills; and because you alone among us aren’t trained in combat. And also,’ he said with a thin smile, ‘because I want you to know exactly what you’ve put me through. I’m a vengeful man. Petty, and vengeful. Let’s begin.’
Reaching up onto a shelf, he took down a folded sheet of paper. ‘I haven’t wasted my nine years here. Long ago I prepared an array of defences in case the worst happened, and this plan sets them out.’ He handed the paper to Nish. ‘Get a lantern and read it outside – I’ve got to get on without interruption. Take some more amber-wood; you’ll need all the concealment you can carry.’ He scooped chips and shavings from the table. ‘It might even conceal you from Gatherer, as long as the tears are a long way away.’
‘But not from the eyes of ordinary soldiers?’ said Nish, handing chips to Colm and Zham. Colm shook his head. He already had a pocketful.
‘No, unfortunately. Nor from the tears if Jal-Nish gets onto the plateau.’
Nish, Colm and Zham checked their weapons and went out. Flydd lifted the lid of a box behind the door and removed four large packets of food wrapped in woven reeds. He opened the first – strips of dried swamp creeper flesh, from the colour – and wolfed them down with gasping gulps from a water jug. When he’d consumed the lot, enough to feed the five of them, he held the empty jug out and began on the second packet, more of the green biscuits.
‘Are you all right?’ said Maelys uneasily, not taking the jug. ‘Water!’ He crammed a lump of biscuit in his mouth sideways. ‘Renewal is the most draining spell of all and one can’t eat for days afterwards. And besides –’ He shook the jug at her. ‘Just fill the damn thing.’
She scurried out and scooped it full at the nearest rivulet. By the time she returned, Flydd’s stomach was bulging like a pregnant woman’s. He was at the table, reading a blackened grimoire which was charred at the edges, as if it had been rescued from a fire. She handed him the jug, which he drained in a single long swallow, then let it fall to the earth floor. She stood by the fire, waiting for him to tell her what to do. After five minutes he was still turning the pages so she said, ‘Xervish, how would you have me prepare?’
‘By holding your bloody tongue.’
She did so for another while, then couldn’t stand it any longer. ‘Are you angry with me?’
He stood up suddenly, treading on the jug and kicking it out of the way. ‘Of course I’m angry. I’m a proud old man, set in my ways, and you’ve forced me to a path I swore never to take. Renewal is utterly abhorrent to me; I’ve never felt anything but contempt for those mancers who’ve taken it, whatever their justification. I feel like a hypocrite.’
How little she’d known what she was asking. But she hadn’t taken the choice from him – how could she? He’d made the decision for himself. ‘Why did you choose me?’
‘I told you – petty revenge.’
‘I’ve never thought of you as a petty man.’
He smiled thinly. ‘And after knowing me for half a day, little Maelys can read all the quirks of my character. Isn’t she a clever one!’
How could she have thought to bandy words with him? ‘But –’
‘Will you shut up! I can’t think for your foolish chatter.’ She shut up, feeling bruised. He turned the pages back and forth, settled on one and began to read. His lips moved as if he were rehearsing lines, then he placed a dried rush in the book and closed it.
‘I also chose you
for the inner strength you displayed a while back, and your unwavering courage.’
She thought he was being sarcastic again. ‘It wavers all the time, Xervish.’
‘Not the way mine does; or Nish’s,’ he said meaningfully. ‘Besides, I may have to draw strength from you to complete the spell, since my body is so cursedly frail.’
She didn’t think it was quite as frail as he made out, but said, ‘I’ll do whatever I can.’
‘Splendid!’ he said with fake joviality. ‘Let’s begin.’ Opening a small flat wooden case which she hadn’t noticed on the table, he fingered something inside, then drew it out between finger and thumb.
The crystal, about the size of one of her finger joints, was a pale translucent red, though as it warmed to his touch it gave out the faintest inner glow. The box held four more crystals, each a different shape and colour, but dull.
Seeing her staring at the box, he said, ‘I don’t have to explain about powered crystals, do I?’
‘Er –’
‘Any crystals charged before the nodes were destroyed will retain that power for a long time, though once it’s drawn upon the crystal becomes useless.’
‘I do know that much. Where did you get them?’
‘I’d hidden three of them in a secret place long ago, in case the worst happened. After Jal-Nish came to power I walked halfway across Lauralin, hunted all the way, to recover them.’ He paused for a long moment, lost in memories. ‘That story, were it ever told, would rival one of the lesser Great Tales of ancient times. The other two crystals I bought later, at the most fantastic cost – a mancer’s ransom, in fact. The fewer such crystals are left, the more valuable the remaining ones become. Keep silent while I recite the spell, then wait.’
After a pause she said, ‘I don’t know what you want me to do.’
‘Stand by and be ready to hand me the second crystal, though I pray I won’t need it. Assuming that renewal gives me the strength to use them, at least three crystals, and maybe four, will be required to force the barrier for our escape, then hold the shadow realm open for the hours it will take to traverse it. Not to mention keeping at bay the phantasms which stalk that place, hungering for the flesh-and-blood prey which offer their only hope of escape from the shadow realm, like blood-sucking leeches hitching a ride out of the endless slough to the undefended feasting grounds.’
He sounded almost lyrical as he spoke but an abrupt hand gesture told her to ask no more questions. ‘Put out the lights; cover your eyes from the crystal and keep out of its sphere of influence. Now!’
He began to take his clothes off. Maelys stared at his scrawny and horribly scarred chest, which looked as though the surplus flesh had been gouged off with a red-hot spoon, then hastily turned away.
She didn’t see him cast the spell on himself, for she had her back turned, blowing out the second lantern, though she heard guttural whispers in a language she did not know. A brilliant red flare cast her wavering shadow on the wall for a few seconds, then began to fade. Flydd gasped, in pain.
Mindful of his orders, she turned carefully, shielding her eyes from the flare, only to see him falling. Steaming blood dripped from the fingers of his right hand, where the crystal had given up all its power in a moment. Now colourless, cloudy and dark, it lay on the floor in fragments.
‘Xervish!’ She ran the five steps to him but didn’t get there in time. He hit the floor with a hollow thump. His heels drummed, rustling the rushes, and he lay still.
The egg-shaped floating flare drifted up towards the ceiling, slowly fading. She knelt beside Flydd in its dim red light, afraid that the onset of the spell had killed him, but found a faint pulse in his neck. His eyes were staring glassily, like a dead man’s. She went to close them with her fingertips but his bony arm snapped up, cracking painfully into her wrist and knocking it away.
‘Don’t – touch –’
The flare dwindled to a point of dull red below the central roof beam, directly above them. Flydd had gone so rigid that she could hear his joints cracking. His teeth ground together and liquids gurgled in his distended belly, which bulged up as if he’d swallowed a watermelon, then all was still save for the wind shaking the walls of the hut.
The minutes ticked by. Maelys crouched beside Flydd in numb terror. Why hadn’t he told her what was going to happen? Was the spell working properly? If it went wrong, how would she know, and what was she supposed to do then? Were Jal-Nish’s climbers creeping up the clefts, even now?
Half an hour might have gone by before anything changed, then the red point of light went blue. A speck formed at its base and swelled until it resembled a large dangling soap bubble. It wobbled back and forth, expanding at the bottom, broke off and drifted down towards them.
Maelys was crouched by Flydd, watching the bubble fall and wondering what it meant, when his arm snapped out again, whacking her painfully across the nose and knocking her backwards. She didn’t realise that he was protecting her until the bubble landed on his face.
It went flat and the curved edges rolled out in all directions, stretching to enclose his head, then extending down his neck and trunk, and across his shoulders and underneath, until his whole body had been enveloped. Again the light faded, though not completely this time. Not enough to conceal what was happening to him, unfortunately.
It began with little blisters forming on his face, thousands of them, until no patch of skin was unaffected. The blisters expanded, linking into a continuous swelling which spread across his head and inflated with fluid, lifting the skin away from his flesh in one bloody piece, hair and all. The same process was extending down his body. She averted her eyes.
Flydd’s fingers clenched and unclenched. He writhed, went rigid, writhed again and rose slightly off the floor as the blisters grew and combined beneath him. In a few minutes he was enclosed in a transparent balloon of inflated skin, beneath which the raw flesh bubbled and wept red trails until eddies in the blister fluid rendered it opaque.
The only parts of him unchanged were his eyes, staring sightlessly up until the blister closed them off, then his mouth and nostrils as well. He no longer bore any resemblance to Flydd. He was just one gigantic, human-shaped blister almost as big as Zham.
Something popped beneath him, releasing a nauseating stench. Maelys didn’t dare move in case he called on her, so she held her nose and endured it. The blue pinprick of light below the roof beam turned green and faded until she could barely make out the shape of the blister, though what she could see was alarming enough.
It was undulating, waves rippling through the fluid from one end of his body to the other. It swelled at his feet, but shrank again. Pulses ran down and back up. His knees inflated; the blister fluid whirled there like water going down a plughole, then went still.
Nothing else happened for a long time. Maelys’s own knees were aching. So was her back. She settled against a chair and waited. And waited. She was half asleep when the door was thrust open and Nish burst in. He took two strides into the room then stopped abruptly, staring at the elongated blob on the floor.
‘Is that –?’ He couldn’t finish. ‘What’s he doing, Maelys?’
‘Xervish used the first crystal to cast the renewal spell, and this is what happened. That’s all I know.’
Nish made a gagging sound. ‘Is – is this how it’s supposed to go?’
‘I have no idea. He didn’t tell me anything.’
He cursed softly, his chest rising and falling. Water dropped from his coat, forming muddy puddles on the earth floor.
‘Is there any sight of the enemy?’ she asked.
‘No sight. No sound. They could be up to any devilry and we won’t know until they fall on us.’ He looked down at her. ‘Three of us can’t stop them. There’s no way out.’
‘We mustn’t give up hope, Nish.’ Even in her own ears she sounded unconvincing. Nish gave her a desperate, white-eyed look and went out.
Maelys resumed her watch, though nothing happened apar
t from an occasional swirl within the blister. An hour later Nish returned, inspected the amorphous shape on the floor and retreated without saying anything. Maelys was really worried now. Half the mancers who had attempted renewal didn’t survive it, Flydd had said, and surely most had been stronger and less frail than he. Were those faint movements within the blister his death agonies?
Without warning, his distended stomach inflated even more, bulging to the left then the right as if there were wrestling twins inside, and slowly began to shrink until it was as flat as it had been when she’d first met him; then even flatter. It went concave and hard, outlining the stringy muscles of his belly. The bubble pulled in at the sides but grew at either end; there were more roilings, churnings, bulges and depressions, and more unpleasant smells.
A spasm racked him from one end to the other; the bubble churned more violently than ever, and the fold which had closed off Flydd’s mouth parted with a sticky hiss. ‘Crrrr!’ he said, an agonised crackle. ‘Ccccrrri –’
She went to her knees again, reaching for him but, remembering his earlier warning, drew back before she touched the bubble. ‘Xervish, what is it?’
‘Crrr – crrrrr –’
The second crystal! She sprang up, snatched the blue crystal from the case and carefully slid it between his balloon-like fingers. Flydd tried to raise it but the bubble was now so taut that he could not bend his elbow.
The fold over his mouth parted again. He made an urgent sound she could not decipher, ‘Wa! Wa!’ and it wasn’t until he’d said it a third time that she realised he meant, ‘Away!’
Fool! She sprang backwards and was turning aside when the crystal went off, dazzlingly bright. Shards punctured his finger blisters, which spurted fluid like pricked sausages in a frying pan but quickly sealed over again.
Flydd let out a hoarse, crackly scream. Beneath the body-blister, bulges and depressions undulated in all directions. His legs lengthened suddenly as if propelled by bands of rubber, before whipping back to thick, stumpy limbs no longer than her forearm.