by Ian Irvine
Beneath the fire, the original stone floor appeared solid, though when she stepped on it her foot came down with a thud; it was slightly lower than it seemed. Stepping carefully, she crept along the grand entrance hall.
Every so often, as if from the corner of her eye, she caught another glimpse of the translucent barrier and the shadows moving in the void behind it. How much would it take to release that alien horde into Santhenar, and if they got in, could humanity survive? The lyrinx war had begun after a mere handful of lyrinx escaped from the void, and it had lasted a hundred and fifty years.
Ahead now, at the heart of the palace, stood Jal-Nish’s majestic audience chamber, a vast oval space a hundred spans by sixty, with its ceiling soaring fifteen spans above them. Sweeping curves of slender golden columns marked the edges of the chamber, the flames coiling in impenetrable walls between them. All was monumental, eerie and beautiful. This was a room suited to a God-Emperor, or to a being.
‘There it is,’ breathed Nish as something moved at the far end of the chamber where his father’s throne had once stood.
Stilkeen hung suspended in webs of fire and shadow, which had the lazy swirl of flames seen through the door of a furnace. Yalkara had said that it could take any aspect imaginable, but it wore much the same guise as when it had abducted Jal-Nish – the broad, winged skull, the membrane-covered yellow eyes and the massively muscled body. Maelys wondered why it still looked the same. Could it be trapped in this one form? Might that be a weakness they could use against it?
‘Why the fire webs?’ said Tulitine.
‘In its severed state, the physical worlds cause it great pain –’ said Yggur.
‘And me,’ she said wryly.
‘– which gets worse the longer it spends here,’ Yggur continued. ‘But by shifting the palace slightly, to keep our physical world at a distance, and remaking the building in flame, Stilkeen can remain here relatively pain-free. You’d better give me the taphloid,’ he said quietly to Maelys.
‘Why?’ She didn’t want to give it up. It was the only protection she had.
‘When you’re wearing it, Stilkeen won’t be able to see you.’
Maelys eyed the great creature hanging in its webs. Its eyes seemed to be looking directly at her. ‘I don’t want it to see me.’
‘It has to. Give it here.’
She handed the taphloid over and Yggur moved aside so that Nish and Maelys were at the head of the procession.
Stilkeen stirred as they approached, raised its needle-toothed head, and its voice had the thundering reverberation of air being pumped into a furnace.
‘Who brings the uncorrupted chthonic fire will be rewarded beyond their dreams. Who keeps true fire from Stilkeen will suffer such agonies as no human has ever felt. Have you brought the fire?’
When Nish didn’t move or speak, Flydd nudged him in the middle of the back. Nish squared his broad shoulders and stepped forwards, putting on a show of confidence he could not be feeling. He bowed to Stilkeen, though not in subservience; rather, as one equal to another. Maelys was amazed that he could do so; she was so afraid that she would have fallen on her face.
‘Lord Stilkeen,’ said Nish sonorously, ‘we have brought you fire from three sources, as pure and white as we could find, and preserved as best we could. We cannot tell if it is the fire you seek.’
‘Bring it to me,’ said Stilkeen, and Maelys thought she saw a trace of eagerness in its small yellow eyes as the nictitating membranes swept back and forth across them, protecting them from contact with even the air of the real world.
Yggur handed three flat black circles, the dimensionless boxes, to Maelys. Each had a different marking on the outside, to show where the contents had been found.
‘Why are you giving them to me?’ she squawked.
‘You’re the best person to do it,’ he said quietly. ‘Stilkeen won’t see you as a threat, since –’
‘I can’t use my gift! What if it doesn’t like what’s in the boxes?’
‘I don’t know what it will do, Maelys, but rest assured, it’ll happen to us as well.’
That was not comforting.
‘Give them to me,’ said Nish, whose knuckles were white on the hilt of his blade. ‘It’s my job. I don’t want Maelys –’
‘Yggur’s right, Nish,’ Flydd said quietly. ‘She’s the best chance we’ve got.’
Maelys felt better for knowing that Nish was worried about her, though only a little. She took a small step, then another. How was one supposed to address a being, anyhow? Would it be insulted if she got it wrong, or wouldn’t it care?
‘Oh Great Stilkeen, Roamer of the Celestial Realms –’ she began.
‘Give – me – white – fire,’ said Stilkeen, reaching out. The webs of fire and shadow must have been sticky, for they made zipping sounds as its movements separated them.
And despite the protection of the webs, it was in pain. Maelys could sense its torment, as she had the first time she’d seen it. ‘I hope these can ease your suffering.’ She bowed low.
Stilkeen regarded her silently, then reached out with one enormous hand.
‘Th-this fire came from the Tower of a Thousand Steps,’ said Maelys. ‘I found it deep in the icy foundations.’ She handed Stilkeen the first dimensionless box.
Stilkeen plunged one hand in through the blackness – clearly it had no fear of being enveloped by the box – and plucked out a fistful of white fire, which it tossed into the air and swallowed. Throwing the dimensionless box to one side, it said, ‘Not pure enough.’
She handed it the second box. ‘This fire was clinging to the shattered casket Yalkara hid long ago, deep below Mistmurk Mountain.’
Stilkeen put its thick lips to the box and sucked out the fire. ‘Purer, but not pure.’
Her skin crawled. This was their last chance, and if it failed, then what? She gave it the third box. ‘This fire I found on the ruined world of Aachan, where it had been taken up by toadstools growing in a canyon.’
Stilkeen hooked a nail into the non-existent edge of the dimensionless box and peeled it apart into two identical black circles. Fire flickered between them but it was no longer white – it had gone a raw, bleeding red. After studying it carefully, Stilkeen put one black circle over the other until they fused into one, sealing in the fire, then crushed the dimensionless box in its fist until it vanished.
‘Your passage from Aachan corrupted the white fire and rendered it useless. Is that all?’
Dread was now an icy waterfall down Maelys’s back. ‘There is more on Aachan. You can easily –’
‘Stilkeen cannot go to Aachan; and fire cannot be brought from Aachan without becoming corrupted.’ It looked her up and down, incuriously. ‘As you tried honestly, you will not be consumed immediately. You may yet serve.’
FORTY-TWO
Nish swallowed the lump in his throat as Maelys shuffled away from Stilkeen. He had been so afraid for her that he could hardly breathe. When she reached him he took her upper arm and drew her gently backwards, and the rest of his company moved with them. Yggur slid the taphloid into her hand and the being’s gaze slipped off her onto Nish, then to Hackel and Vomix.
‘Well?’ it said.
Hackel glanced at Vomix, who did not speak.
‘I too have found white fire,’ said Hackel, putting his hand into the bag slung on his belt. ‘I took it from the topmost chamber of Yalkara’s abandoned fortress, Havissard, many years ago. I did not know what it was, and I have always kept it in the sapphire case in which I found it. If it was pure then, it should be pure still.’
Stilkeen’s yellow eyes narrowed to points. ‘In Havissard?’
‘Just so.’
‘Bring me the case.’
Surreptitiously, Hackel signed behind him to his men. What was he up to?
From his bag, he withdrew a rectangular blue case, like a jewel box, and slunk towards Stilkeen like the jackal that was his namesake. Nish edged backwards until he felt Flydd’s hand
touch his shoulder.
‘Don’t move a hair,’ whispered Flydd.
Hackel’s boots appeared to skim the flame floor without touching the solid stone beneath. He went to his knees before Stilkeen, bowing so low that it seemed insolent, and raising the case above his head. As Stilkeen reached for it, Hackel’s thumb slid across a projection in its base.
The lid of the case flipped up and something exploded out of it, unzipping and expanding at colossal speed – a light-touched net that unfolded in the air, soaring up and over Stilkeen to envelop him, and every winking shard of light reflecting from it marked a little tri-pronged barb. The instant it touched, Stilkeen shrieked and began to writhe in agony.
Hackel’s men stormed the webs of fire and he whipped out a fuming sword that was similarly light-touched. He was leaping up to thrust it into the being’s throat when Stilkeen dashed the net aside. Red welts were rising all over its hand and arm where the barbs had touched it, the points concentrating the pain of contact with the physical world. Had the net enveloped it completely, Stilkeen might have been rendered helpless by the pain.
Its left arm lengthened; its hand expanded enormously and shot towards Hackel, catching him immovably around the chest. His fuming sword fell, repelling the flames in a circle as it struck the floor. Stilkeen’s right hand became a hammer that went up, then slammed down onto the first soldier as if driving a nail, smashing him into a smear on the floor. It whacked another five times, finishing the others, before pulling back into a normal hand.
The room was silent now. As a demonstration of power, it had been terrifyingly convincing.
Hackel tried to smile. ‘It was worth the gamble.’
‘Was – it?’ Stilkeen said in a staccato voice, as if every word hurt now. It closed its enormous fist as if squeezing a lemon, and when no more red sludge could be squeezed out of Hackel it tossed the crushed bone-bag aside.
Nish avoided looking at the mess. Their fate hung on Stilkeen’s slightest whim, and no one knew what might set it off.
‘Does – anyone – else – have – fire?’ said Stilkeen, rubbing the welts and twitching.
Vomix’s men were backing away. Where was he? In the confusion, he had slipped out, abandoning them. ‘You – red-haired – man. Does – your – master – have – fire?’
‘No,’ whispered the red-haired officer. ‘Seneschal Vomix …’ He licked dry, flaking lips. ‘He planned to steal it from Nish.’
Stilkeen transformed an arm into a scythe and cut the officer and his men down before they could move.
‘Anyone – fire?’ repeated Stilkeen. Its eyes narrowed; it was looking behind Nish.
Outside, something hummed over the paved plain, then back the way it had come. It can only be Klarm, Nish thought. In our most desperate hour, he comes. But the hum faded and disappeared.
‘Master!’ cried a harsh, dead voice. ‘My new master.’
The reanimated Zofloc was lurching forwards, carrying a small round glass flask whose contents were bubbling.
‘What – have – you – there?’ said Stilkeen.
‘White fire, Master, purified of all baseness and corruption. I distilled it myself.’
‘You – presume! How – could – you – know – what – was – corrupt?’ Stilkeen’s mouth opened and closed; little flames shivered up and down its throat. It shook its blistered arm, making a faint moaning sound.
‘Try it, Master.’
Stilkeen swirled the flask, tasted some distilled fire on a finger and spat it against a column. Pink flame belched up. Stilkeen dropped the flask on the floor, put a huge foot on it and smashed it. With the other foot, it did the same to the sorcerer, sending squirts of Zofloc in several directions. One splattered the lower third of General Nosby’s white uniform.
Its feet returned to their normal size; Stilkeen swung back into its webs and hung there, shivering and wincing. Its small eyes turned to General Nosby. ‘And – you?’
‘I command the God-Emperor’s Imperial Guard, Your Highness,’ said Nosby, looking sick. ‘I am here to protect my God-Emperor.’
Stilkeen closed one claw upon another and an image of Jal-Nish was painted on the air before them. His father’s naked body was the mottled blue-green colour of a month-old corpse, and it had been strung up, unmasked and upside-down, from the ceiling of the ninth level of Morrelune. The seeping mouth was clustered with flies, as were the ruined nose, empty eye socket and the hideous scars made by a lyrinx’s claws. Even with the tears, he had never been able to heal himself, and Nish couldn’t bear to look.
‘Poor Father. He must have suffered terribly.’
‘So have my family, and thousands of others,’ said Maelys coolly. ‘Your father made his own choices, while they suffered simply because he ordered it.’
‘Even so,’ said Nish. ‘He was my father.’
‘That – thing – call – himself – God-Emperor?’ said Stilkeen.
‘He was to me,’ Nosby said, clearly shaken to see his master’s great power and presence reduced to nothing.
‘No – God-Emperor,’ said Stilkeen. ‘Just – pitiful, mortal – man.’
The image faded and its eyes moved back and forth over the survivors. Nish wished he’d run while he had the chance. Stilkeen pulled at a length of the flame-and-shadow web, bound it around its blistered hand and arm, and pressed it down until it could barely be seen. Its pain appeared to ease.
‘You have no more fire to offer?’ said Stilkeen, speaking smoothly again.
‘We searched everywhere,’ said Nish. ‘There was no pure fire.’
‘Yet it exists, not far away,’ said Stilkeen. ‘It will be preserved in a vessel made of corundite, the only substance that can maintain it uncorrupted. I know the pure fire exists; I can feel it, but corundite does not permit me to locate it.’ Its eyes narrowed, the needle teeth slid seamlessly together. ‘After the creatures from the void have exacted retribution, they will find it for me.’
Stilkeen raised a hand and the flame ceiling thinned until Nish could see the translucent barrier behind the palace, like an endless, sky-high wall. It appeared more transparent than before, while the shapes clustering on the other side were clearer and more menacing. Stilkeen was going to open the void and no one could stop it.
Then, as they waited for their doom, the humming Nish had heard earlier rose to a howl and an extraordinary contraption hurtled in through the flame-wreathed entrance of Morrelune.
It had the deep keel and curving sides of a sea-going galleon, save that they were made of brass interleaved with black metal intricately decorated with silver. Its bow was high and pointed, with flaring metal shields extending along the sides of the deck in place of rails, while several white hooplike structures rose above the deck like covered wagons. An inscription in flowing writing on the bow read, Three Reckless Old Ladies.
‘Reckless old ladies?’ said Nish, bemused.
A small javelard, set in a rectangular, box-like wooden frame, was mounted behind the bow shields, and on a platform at the stern stood a catapult on a swivelling mount.
The sky-galleon flashed by, skidded sideways across the centre of the audience chamber, buffeting the flames all around, and a jowly old woman with jiggling chins – Yulla, no less! – fired the contents of the catapult point-blank at Stilkeen.
Nish couldn’t tell what she had fired, but Stilkeen let out a shriek of agony, shrank to a quarter of its former size and wrapped the webs of flame and shadow tightly about itself, shaking wildly and squealing.
The sky-galleon curved around towards everyone, dropped sharply and its keel screeched across the solid floor beneath the flame.
‘Get in!’ yelled a little old lady, her eyes huge with excitement in her lined face. She trotted along the deck, hurling rope ladders over the side.
‘Lilis!’ said Maelys in astonishment, and ran for the nearest ladder. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘I’ve retired from the Great Library to go adventuring,’ Lilis said,
pulling on Maelys’s arm as she reached the top. ‘Quick!’
Nish scrambled up and the others followed. M’lainte, as unkempt as ever, stood in the wheelhouse holding a protruding knob where the wheel of a ship would normally have been mounted. It rather resembled the controller she had made for the air-sled after the attack on the monastery. ‘Ready?’
‘Ready, set, go!’ shouted Lilis, as if she were ten again, and leapt up and down, clapping her hands. ‘Beautiful shot, Yulla. Fire again.’
The sky-galleon took off with a jerk that threw everyone against the wheelhouse, and began to circle the audience chamber. Yulla emptied a bag of sand into the catapult bucket, hauled her bloated body into the seat, aimed and fired again.
This time the sand went wide, save for a scatter which struck the webs covering Stilkeen’s lower parts. It shrieked in agony, shot upwards like an unbound spring and the clinging webs peeled apart, the fire webs dangling below it, the webs of shadow sticking to the floor and wall. Stilkeen propelled itself through an opening in the ceiling and the fire webs were jerked up after it, out of sight.
‘Never has any face been so welcome, M’lainte,’ cried Nish, shaking her hand.
‘I told you Yulla needed the air-sled,’ said M’lainte, beaming all over her old face. ‘I made the sky-galleon from it. Er, you can let go now.’
He released her hand. Maelys was looking at the three old women in bemusement.
‘Maelys, meet Yulla and M’lainte,’ said Nish. ‘Back in Roros, Yulla was planning to look for a weapon against Stilkeen – but sand?’
‘If it was in such pain from simply being in our world,’ said Yulla, ‘we reasoned that contact with any physical object must be so much worse.’
‘So we hit it with hard, gritty sand dug from the River Zur beside the Great Library,’ said Lilis, ‘a million sharp grains at once. The pain was so bad that it had to run.’