by Ian Irvine
‘I – am – Xervish – Flydd,’ said the renewed Flydd, as if trying to convince himself.
Without warning, blasts of white fire speared down towards each of the four clefts in the plateau. Shouts echoed up from the main cleft, nearest the hut.
Nish and Colm exchanged glances. ‘He’s cleared the barriers,’ said Nish. ‘His army will be here in minutes. We’d better get going.’
The sky palace was now held rock-steady in the howling gale, hanging just a few spans above the mires. A white railing swung aside and a set of silver stairs extended out and down to one of the paths.
A pair of white-armour-clad soldiers appeared, the God-Emperor’s Imperial Guard in their field uniforms. They marched down the steps to inspect the land below. The guard on the right gestured with a gloved hand towards the hut. The great windlasses spun, the cables creaked, and the sky palace began to creep in their direction.
The first soldiers appeared from the main cleft, followed by a handful from the south-western one which Nish had fired. Soon squads of troops were advancing across the plateau and around the rim paths, their armour sparking. Even if Maelys had charged the crystal, she’d never get through to them now.
‘Come on!’ Nish said hoarsely, dragging Flydd behind the hut. They were finished but he was going to fight to the very end. The others followed close behind. ‘He said there’s a hidden rope ladder.’
Everyone began to feel among the rocks, save Flydd. ‘Need – time.’
‘There is no more time, Xervish,’ cried Nish. ‘That’s the God-Emperor out there and if you don’t do something we’re all doomed.’
‘Doom – time,’ mumbled Flydd.
Colm began searching the mossy edge of the cliff. Zham was walking backwards parallel to the cliff, dragging his sword hilt across the ground. ‘It’s here!’
He groped between the rocks and pulled up a moss-covered rope ladder, one end of which was fixed to a ring buried in the rock. ‘Looks half rotten,’ he said to himself, then shrugged, went to the cliff and tossed the free end over. He peered down. ‘There’s a hollow in the cliff below here. Could be a cave or tunnel.’
‘If it isn’t,’ said Colm dryly, ‘we’d better keep going down when the ladder ends.’
A searing blast smashed the amber-wood hut into a wave of whirling, smouldering splinters that battered against them before being swept over the cliff. The blast would have carried Zham with it had he not been hanging onto the ladder. He slipped, went half over, then moved down out of sight.
The sky palace stopped about fifty spans from where the hut door had been. The white staircase extended again and Nish’s heart clenched painfully, for at the top of it, dressed all in black and flanked by his tall guards, stood his father.
‘There’s no way to escape, Cryl-Nish,’ Jal-Nish called, smiling thinly beneath the half-mask. He strode towards Nish. ‘There never was; never will be. This has all been a game. You can either play it against me and lose every time, or play with me and win. Which is it to be?’
Nish assessed the chance of escape. None. Colm was heading for the ladder and might get down, but Jal-Nish would take Nish and Flydd before they could reach the ladder. And without a competent, empowered Flydd they had no hope anyway.
‘Xervish?’ said Nish, desperately.
‘Need – time,’ said Flydd dully.
‘You’ll have all the time you could wish for, Xervish,’ said Jal-Nish, stopping where the hut had been and examining Flydd dispassionately. ‘I can’t believe you, of all people, were taken in by that renewal spell. It has a false step in it. Surely you knew that?’
‘Step …?’ said Flydd.
‘It was put there in ancient times to ensure that only the truly deserving could successfully take the path of renewal. Any great mancer would have recognised the falsehood, but you always were flawed, Flydd.’
‘Time,’ said Flydd, more strongly.
‘You’ll have all the time you can endure.’ Jal-Nish turned away to face Nish. ‘Cryl-Nish, my only son –’
‘Time!’ said Flydd.
Suddenly Nish realised what he was saying. He whipped up his sword and sent it spinning at his father. ‘Go!’ he roared.
The sword vanished in a flash of fire, forming a shower of molten metal that had Jal-Nish and his soldiers reeling backwards.
Nish caught Flydd’s arm and bolted for the ladder. He thrust Flydd’s foot onto the top rung, pushed him down, then followed as quickly as he could, though before his head dropped below the edge of the cliff his father had recovered and the sky palace began creeping towards them.
The ladder was bouncing and banging around in the updraught, each thump against the cliff tearing skin off Nish’s knuckles. Down about twenty rungs he saw a streaming curtain of moss and algae partly covering an opening in the cliff. He reached it and Zham’s huge hands pulled Nish in and set him on the floor.
He couldn’t hear the sky palace coming over the howling gale, but it wouldn’t be long. As his eyes adjusted to the dark, Nish looked towards the back of the cave, which ended in a flat wall with two half columns carved in the rock at either side, like pillars framing a doorway.
Outside, the great cables whined as the nearby anchor was released, lowered and, with a crunch of shattered rock, hooked on further down the cliff. The sky palace crept over the edge and out, dropped to their level then pulled back in, illuminating the cave with its reflected whiteness. This time, though, the staircase didn’t extend.
Instead, a glittering plank slid out until it parted the moss curtains at the entrance. It was narrow but Jal-Nish trod it confidently, as if there wasn’t a drop of a thousand spans to either side and the treacherous updraughts whirling all about. Perhaps with the tears he could even control gravity’s pull on him.
And he had the tears, or one of them, dangling from a chain around his neck. Nish couldn’t tell which one. Jal-Nish stopped just outside, his greying hair stirring in the wind, condensed moisture dripping off the platinum mask. Nish couldn’t breathe. Flydd was still mumbling, but to no effect. It was too late. Jal-Nish stepped through the moss curtain, his real hand caressing the tear, the restored arm hanging stiffly at his side.
‘Gatherer?’ Nish said limply.
‘No, Son. It’s time for Reaper.’
FIFTY-ONE
Maelys felt a shriek of raw, living terror building up inside her, and this time she didn’t try to suppress it, because she’d remembered Phrune’s one weakness and if she didn’t act on it instantly she was dead. She let it out, screaming so loudly and shrilly that it tore at her healing throat where it had been scored by the barbs of the slurchie.
Phrune clapped his hands over his ear holes, trying to block out the high-pitched sounds which caused him so much pain. Instantly, Maelys punched him in the larynx. Her father had once told her that it was a good way to disable an attacker.
Phrune fell to his knees, gasping, though he could still draw air. She hadn’t hit him hard enough. He began to struggle to his feet. She kicked them from under him then grabbed her staff and thumped him over the head with it.
There was no time to think. Maelys sprang up onto the centre of the slab and held the clear crystal in the cursed flame, praying that it was the right thing to do. The flame was only warm, but a shock ran up her arm, then her muscles contracted violently, hurling her backwards. She landed on the flat top of the slab, tingling all over and unable to get up, for her muscles wouldn’t obey her.
Phrune pushed himself to his feet, looking like a mutilated, malevolent death’s head, and let out an incongruous giggle. ‘It’s the cursed flame, Maelys. Are you really that stupid? Yes, you must be. You can’t get up; can’t move. You’ve doomed yourself. What bliss you’re going to give me as I take your skin and offer your blood to my master.’
He turned away into the gloom beyond the direct rays of the cursed flame. Maelys heard scuffling and shortly he reappeared, hauling the limp form of Monkshart.
The zealot was nake
d, his ruined skin weeping from hundreds of inflamed cracks, but his head, neck and shoulders were a bloody, grotesque mess. Almost all the carefully tended long hair had fallen out and his face looked as though it had been boiled in acid. The corrugated, bark-like skin there was gone apart from a few residual tiles standing above raw flesh. His eyes were swollen closed and he was barely breathing.
Phrune saw the expression in her eyes as she looked at the ruin that had once been a man.
‘Nish attacked him, after all my master did for him. But he’ll pay.’
Phrune hauled Monkshart into a cavity Maelys hadn’t noticed, under the broad end of the slab, and scuffling indicated that he’d dragged him beneath the star-shaped hole through which the cursed flame issued.
Phrune’s head popped up above the other end of the slab. ‘Are you ready to be sacrificed, Maelys? Of course you are, but you can’t say so, can you? You can’t move, for the kiss of the flame has paralysed you. What a pity you didn’t take the trouble to find out first.’
Maelys tried to wiggle her toes, and found that she could move them a little. She attempted the same with her hand, the one that had gone into the flame. It didn’t budge, though she caught a faint diamond-clear flicker between her fingers, as if some of the brightness of the cursed flame had been trapped within the crystal. It didn’t help her; she had no idea how to use that power.
Her arm was completely dead but she could move the fingers of her other hand. Perhaps the amber-wood had helped. Unfortunately, she couldn’t think of a way to use it either.
Phrune clambered up and started to unfasten the toggles of the amber-wood coat, but his oily fingers were shaking in his excitement and kept fumbling. Monkshart let out a piteous groan from beneath the slab.
Phrune cried, ‘Sorry, Master,’ then hacked the cords apart with his ever-ready stiletto, scattering amber-wood everywhere.
‘Flydd must have come to a pretty pass if he has to make himself a coat out of wood,’ he sneered.
He didn’t know it was amber-wood. Not that it helped.
Monkshart moaned. ‘Master, what is it?’ said Phrune.
‘Piiittt,’ said Monkshart.
‘What, Master?’
Monkshart said nothing. Phrune looked over the side, head cocked. ‘Ah, yes. What did you see in the Pit of Possibilities, Maelys?’
She didn’t answer, thinking that he’d have to keep her alive until she told him, and if she could just hold out –
In an instant he was beside her, gripping her nose with his slippery fingers. ‘You’re not a pretty girl, Maelys, but you’ll be hideous when I cut your nose off.’ He pressed the blade up against her nostrils. ‘Be quick. My master is dying and I won’t tolerate delay.’
Maelys couldn’t waste time, either. If she didn’t get the crystal back to Flydd soon, it would be too late. ‘I saw Jal-Nish with the tears,’ she said. ‘He was close to reaching his ultimate goals.’
‘What goals?’ Phrune’s eyes glistened in the blue light of the flame.
‘He needs but three things to become invulnerable: perfect knowledge of the tears; complete mastery of himself; and a clear understanding of the Art by which he uses Gatherer and Reaper. And he’s close to gaining all three …’
‘But that’s not all, is it? What else did you see?’
She didn’t want to reveal their solitary hope of undermining the God-Emperor but the blade was cutting into her nostrils. One slash and her nose would be gone, and she couldn’t bear that even if she was going to die. ‘He’s afraid.’
Phrune sighed. ‘Ahh!’ and it was echoed from under the slab. ‘What is he afraid of?’
Maelys couldn’t think of any convincing lie. She wished she could resist him but felt too afraid. ‘We believe that somewhere, at the moment the tears were formed, their antithesis was also created – the one thing that could undermine their power.’
Phrune went very still, save for his dark, flickering tongue. ‘Where is this antithesis?’ he hissed. ‘What is it?’
‘I have no idea. But if an enemy –’
Monkshart made a grunting sound and Phrune interjected. ‘That’s all we need!’ He favoured her with his sick grin. ‘Now my time begins.’
He began to strip off Maelys’s clothes, carefully, though not out of any concern for her. He didn’t want to risk an accidental nick that would damage her beautiful skin. He had her naked in a minute, then began to run his hands all over her, gloating over the fineness of the body-glove he was going to make from her.
She tried to restrain her disgust, to pretend to raw, incoherent terror, and that wasn’t hard at all. Let him think that she was helpless and there might be a chance, for she’d had an idea.
He eased her into position until her backside was over the star-shaped hole, the cursed flame licking warmly against her buttocks. It tickled but did not burn, but what was it doing to her? She didn’t feel any shock this time, so that must have come from holding the crystal in the flame.
‘Your blood runs down through the star hole,’ said Phrune, ‘where it is sanctified and transformed by the cursed flame. Every drop that drips on my master’s cruelly burned face will restore him.’
Monkshart groaned again. Phrune flicked the blade against the pad of his thumb, several times, frowned, then took out an oiled sharpening stone and began to hone the edge.
While he was thus occupied, Maelys’s groping fingers gathered a piece of amber-wood and poked it beneath her buttocks until it fell into the flame. Feeling a surge of heat, she gathered more amber-wood and awkwardly did the same with it. She thought it was doing some good, because she could move this arm further now, and some life was even coming back to the hand she’d put into the flame. But would it be enough? He didn’t need the skin from her face and neck, for Monkshart didn’t wear tissue-leathers there. Phrune could indulge his lust for pain and suffering all he liked, before draining her blood for his master.
Maelys felt cold inside and out, despite the warmth of the chamber. Her feet were freezing; her pulse ticked slowly in her temples, counting the remaining seconds of her life away. She was afraid to move too soon in case she missed her chance; afraid to wait too long in case he did something irrevocable. She was scared of the cursed flame licking at her buttocks and terrified of Monkshart groaning softly beneath the slab. He smelt like freshly butchered meat.
Phrune finished honing, wiped the blade, laid the sharpening stone on the slab and climbed up. He moved along on hands and knees until he was straddling Maelys, and she began to fear that he’d begin with rape. He laughed at the look on her face, then settled back on his haunches.
‘I wouldn’t touch you in that way for any reward.’ Phrune’s mouth puckered in disgust, then he reached forwards with the knife. Her nerves shrank from the blade but her body couldn’t move. He pricked her throat and his tongue went slither-slap across his lips. Even his eyes seemed to be drooling. She had to do something right now.
What if she thrust a finger into his eye and tried to gouge it out? She didn’t think she could reach that far, for her upper arm and shoulder had little strength yet. Not enough to hurt him.
Then he leaned forwards, deliberately bringing his repulsive face close to hers, and the tissue-wrapped taphloid slipped from his shirt, swinging below his bruised throat. He licked his lips again and bent over her, concentrating on the first cut.
Maelys saw her only chance, and she took it. Her good hand shot out, clawed the tissue off the taphloid and thrust it through his obscenely plump lips. She ground it into his mouth, holding it there with the heel of her hand.
He reared backwards and dropped the knife, whose point went a finger width into the flesh of her left hip before clattering to the slab. Blood welled out, running underneath her and into the flame, which burned blisteringly hot for a second. Monkshart cried out in pain, or exultation.
Phrune was leaning back on his haunches, squealing as his cheeks inflated and his lips swelled to several times their normal size and turned
a vivid plum purple. Bubbles of blood formed in his right nostril, then his left eye and both ear holes. He began scrabbling at his mouth with his fingers, trying to claw the taphloid out, but his lips were already so swollen that he couldn’t force his fingers in.
Great shudders racked him. His eyes went red; a scream burst through his lips; the taphloid was forced out, to bounce against his throat, every impact creating a circular red swelling.
Maelys felt her upper arm unfreezing, which had to be due to the amber-wood. She gathered all she could reach, raked it into the hole and, as the flame singed her buttocks, felt the paralysis fading.
She hastily rolled off the table before her blood healed Monkshart further, landing hard on her bottom. Her legs were still partly numb but she managed to pull herself to her feet, holding the rough side of the slab, and dressed painfully. Ebbing blood stained her pants along the hip.
Phrune was still crouched on the slab but his head had swollen so much it looked about to explode. The skin along his jawline began to tear in his agony. He looked down at the star hole and tried to smile, but was in too much pain.
Blood trickled from his mouth. He pressed his lips tightly together to contain it. Falling to his hands and knees, he crawled forwards to the hole, saying in gurgling dribbles, ‘Master … my last service …’
A red mouthful poured out, splashing on the stone and running into the cursed flame, which blazed as high as the ceiling, fleetingly revealing something of the size and magnificence of the ancient chamber, before dying down again. Directly above him, a pyramidal conduit led up into darkness, perhaps to the obelisk itself.
Phrune gagged and one hand slipped over the edge of the slab, but he recovered and directed the next mouthful into the flame. He gasped, his eyes protruded; he spat a few stringy drops into the blaze then fell forwards, his head thudding to the slab beside the hole.
His back arched and enough blood to fill a saucepan poured out of him, then a series of clots the size of fried eggs, followed by something white that oozed out and flopped into the hole like a thick white worm, or a piece of intestine.