The Destiny of the Dead (The Song of the Tears Book 3)

by Ian Irvine

  ‘Stilkeen slew me,’ said Jal-Nish, who spoke thickly, as if his bloated tongue filled his gluey mouth, ‘the moment he discovered that I knew nothing about chthonic fire. And I would have died instantly – had I not already taken precautions.’

  ‘Then what we saw up on the ninth level … your … corpse –’

  ‘It was real,’ Jal-Nish said with a shudder. ‘My body was a rotting corpse, and you can’t even imagine what a horror that was. There can be no worse feeling on this side of death than to live on – in a dead body.’

  ‘How?’ Nish croaked. ‘How could you live?’

  His father smiled thinly. ‘The instant I saw Stilkeen, even before it caught me, I withdrew part of my life force into Reaper and, as long as a single living cell remained in my corpse, I clung to life. Weeks passed in that ghastly state, until finally, late last night, faithful Klarm brought me the Tears. Once I had them, Reaper revived me and repaired the worst of the damage. Now here I stand – somewhat decayed, and with much work to do to slough off the rotted flesh and restore myself, but very definitely alive.’

  He favoured Nish with a grotesque smile. Through the half-mask his gums were grey; his good eye oozed a sticky fluid and even from five spans away his breath was foul.

  Nish opened his mouth, but closed it again. There were no words for what he was feeling, and there was nothing he could say to his father.

  ‘I’m particularly disappointed in you, Son,’ Jal-Nish said. ‘I’d thought, after your mighty deeds since the Range of Ruin, that you were fit to succeed me after all. Clearly, I overestimated you.’

  ‘I don’t want to be God-Emperor,’ said Nish. ‘I never did.’

  ‘Which proves beyond doubt your unfitness for the throne, in the unlikely event that it should ever become vacant. Had you been fit to succeed me, you would not have stopped until you had burned my body to ash and taken the tears for yourself. But what do you do? Sit down to a picnic without taking the slightest precautions!’ Jal-Nish’s voice dripped contempt.

  And he was right. How could Nish have come so far, then failed so badly in the final moments? Because he could not bear to go near his father’s corpse and do what had to be done.

  ‘You set up this feast to be as much like the last one as possible,’ Jal-Nish went on. ‘Did it not occur to you that it might also end the way the last one did – in every particular?’

  That had not occurred to Nish, but it should have, for Jal-Nish had turned up to ruin the feast at the end of the war as well. And since he’d had the tears for more than half a day, he must have timed his appearance to coincide with this feast.

  He glanced at Maelys, whose brows were knitted; she hadn’t worked it out yet. But then, she had been just a kid ten years ago; and she had not been there.

  ‘How did you get here?’ Nish said dully. His stomach throbbed with jagging pains, as if he had swallowed fish-hooks and someone was trying to pull them out.

  ‘Did Maelys not tell you that she’d encountered faithful Klarm in the lower levels of my palace, and that he was looking for me?’

  Jal-Nish beckoned and Klarm hobbled out from behind the rocks, walking on one foot and the knob-ended rod bound above the stump of his amputated leg. The dwarf looked dreadfully haggard.

  Nish glanced at Maelys, whose small hands were raised now, as if to hold back the horror of Jal-Nish. ‘We haven’t spent much time together lately,’ said Nish.

  At the tables further off, people were talking, laughing, clinking their mugs and celebrating the victory as though nothing had happened, for they could not see Jal-Nish.

  ‘Clearly,’ said the God-Emperor, ‘since she didn’t give you the one piece of information that should have set your alarm bells ringing instantly.’

  ‘It would have made no difference,’ said Nish. ‘We’d all seen your rotting corpse.’

  ‘Then you’re a bigger fool than I thought.’

  The militia scrambled out of the way as Jal-Nish approached. He clambered up onto the left-hand end of the table, pallid and blotchy and reeking like the corpse he had been, but utterly determined to take back what was his.

  ‘The God-Emperor has returned,’ he said in a ringing voice. ‘All hail the God-Emperor!’

  The revelry broke off instantly, and Nish heard someone throwing up. A shocked silence spread across the banquet tables like a ripple across a lake, then everyone began to shout at once. Jal-Nish raised the tears above his head until their churning quicksilver shimmer was reflected in every eye.

  ‘The God-Emperor has returned,’ he repeated, more commandingly. ‘All hail the God-Emperor!’

  Many soldiers rose to their feet, some eagerly, most slowly, and began to chant and bang their swords on their shields. ‘All hail the God-Emperor! Hail, Hail!’

  ‘Imperial Guard, you have sworn to me and me alone,’ called Jal-Nish. ‘Your God-Emperor needs you. Come forward and renew your oaths.’

  The surviving Imperial Guard, eleven white-clad, battered and bloodstained men, came forwards.

  ‘Only eleven?’ said Jal-Nish. ‘Out of eight hundred? Still, eleven of my loyal guards are worth three times as many common soldiers.’

  They renewed their oaths, not entirely without hesitation and, once they had, Jal-Nish gestured them to stand around Nish’s end of the table.

  ‘This time I won’t be bothering with an heir,’ he said with a meaningful glance at Nish, and a darker look at Maelys that sent another jagging pain through Nish’s belly. ‘I don’t need one, because neither my flesh nor my powers will ever wane!’

  Klarm dropped his knoblaggie but did not pick it up. Maelys gave a muffled cry, reached for Nish’s arm, then drew back, and he knew what she was thinking.

  Months ago at the Pit of Possibilities, after she had seen into Jal-Nish’s mind when he’d been using the tears, she had said, He needs only three things to become invulnerable for all time: 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.

  ‘I learned a lot from Stilkeen,’ said Jal-Nish. ‘I now know enough to master the tears and leap further than any other mancer can dream. I’m going to become an immortal being.’

  And we can’t stop you, Nish thought, for they had never found what they had originally gone all the way to the Tower of a Thousand Steps for – the antithesis to the tears, the one power, process, spell or device that could unbind them forever.

  But then it got worse – so terribly, agonisingly worse that Nish wished he could die, anything to escape the agony renewed a thousand times over.

  ‘You lied to me, didn’t you?’ Jal-Nish said to Maelys.

  ‘I – don’t – I …’ she said.

  ‘You told me that you gathered up my son’s spilled seed when you nursed him in his delirium,’ Jal-Nish grated. ‘And inserted it within your virgin body so as to become pregnant to him. Do you deny it?’

  Aunt Haga was staring at Maelys, so astonished that for once she was speechless.

  ‘No,’ whispered Maelys. ‘I said that –’

  ‘And I believed you, because, fool that I was, I was desperate for a grandchild. But it was a lie, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Yes.’ Her voice was barely audible.

  ‘Worse than a lie – it was a monstrous insult to the majesty of the God-Emperor, one that requires the most dreadful punishment. Then, subsequently you became pregnant to Emberr, son of Rulke and Yalkara, the two Charon who, together and separately, brought ruin upon Santhenar many times.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Maelys.

  Now Aunt Haga’s mouth was opening and closing like a dying fish.

  ‘So you fully understand what I must do now,’ said Jal-Nish.

  Maelys didn’t answer. Clearly she did not know what he was talking about, though she feared the worst. But Nish knew, with a shrieking, scalding horror worse than anything he had ever felt, exactly what Jal-Nish was planning to do. He’d already said so.r />
  Did it not occur to you that it might also end the way the last one did – in every particular? Jal-Nish had said, but Nish hadn’t fully taken it in at the time. Now he understood, and the horror was magnified a hundredfold because he already had the entire scene in mind. He’d been replaying it for more than ten years and the agony never grew any less.

  ‘Guards,’ Jal-Nish said to the nearest Imperial Guards-man. ‘Drag Maelys out between the tables and bare her neck. You,’ he said to the second man, ‘raise your sword and do the business.’

  FIFTY-ONE

  The two guards hesitated, but only for a second, before the closest man took hold of Maelys. She was just sitting there, her eyes staring – she finally understood what was going to happen. Everyone did, with the exception of Fyllis, who was moving her little wooden figures about on the table and talking to them in a range of voices, totally immersed in her world of make-believe.

  ‘Hold them,’ cried Jal-Nish, pointing to Nish, Flydd, Clech, Flangers and especially Ryll, and the other nine Imperial Guardsmen, who had so recently sworn allegiance to Nish, sprang to obey. ‘Bind the lyrinx – he’s the one who maimed me thirteen years ago and I have a special punishment for him.’

  Before Nish could draw his sword he had been taken from behind, and so had Flydd and the others. Three guards held Ryll, a naked sword across his throat, while a fourth bound him. Clearly, Jal-Nish knew exactly who had power and who, like Yggur, was no longer a threat.

  The people from the surrounding tables were on their feet, staring, but many had already hailed the God-Emperor and, while the Profane Tears sang their dreadful threnody, none dared to oppose him.

  He clambered down, directing the first two Imperial Guardsman to take Maelys to the open space between the table and the edge of the Sacred Lake. They held her tightly and she put up no resistance. She must have known it was futile.

  The guardsmen were heaving her from her chair, under Jal-Nish’s gloating, oozing eye, when little Fyllis set down her toys, picked up a long serving fork, turned around and plunged it bone-deep into his left thigh.

  He let out a sharp cry, staggered a couple of steps and bellowed, ‘Guards!’

  The guards behind Nish and Clech turned to defend Jal-Nish but Clech knocked the first down with an elbow to the nose, while Nish thrust his sword between the legs of the second, gashing him badly on both thighs and sending him reeling to the ground in twin sprays of blood. The rest of the guards, save those holding Ryll, ran around the end.

  Jal-Nish wrenched out the bloody fork, dropped it, and turned to face Fyllis, slowly moving his hand towards the churning surface of Reaper. ‘You’re going to die for that, little girl,’ he said viciously. ‘Guards, seize her as well. You can take both heads off with the one stroke.’

  Now Maelys began to struggle desperately, but she was powerless in the hands of the guardsmen. One carried her away while another went for Fyllis.

  As he lifted her from her chair, Aunt Haga, a tall, stringy mass of fury, sprang up, swinging one of the large golden fish by the tail, and smashed Jal-Nish across the face so hard that it lifted him off his feet.

  He fell backwards, the mask went flying and Nish’s gut tightened, for beneath the mask the wounds that had refused to heal for thirteen years were gone. That side of his father’s face showed no rot at all – it was baby-smooth, and in his empty eye socket silvery flames flickered, as if the surface of Reaper was reflected there.

  The guard let go of Maelys and stared at the God-Emperor. Little Aimee came out from under the table as if there were springs under her soles and rammed her fist into the throat of Fyllis’s captor. He collapsed, gasping for air, and Aimee pulled her away. The other guards froze, swords in the air.

  Nish slipped free, slid between Maelys and her guard, and held up his bloody blade. ‘If you want her, Father, you’ll have to kill me first.’

  Jal-Nish shakily climbed to his feet, and Nish could see how the father who still cared, in his own twisted way, for his one remaining child was struggling with the monster who had been obsessed with power for so long that no depravity was beyond him. Would he give the order?

  He almost did; Jal-Nish’s lips framed the awful words, Kill him! but he could not speak them.

  ‘Guards,’ he said softly, ‘Take the girls and kill them.’

  The Imperial Guardsmen shook their heads and backed away. They had sworn allegiance to the God-Emperor, but clearly that oath did not include this flame-eyed version of him.

  ‘Then I’ll do it myself,’ said Jal-Nish, reaching for Reaper.

  There was nothing Nish could do this time; nothing anyone could do.

  ‘Leave my sister alone, you nasty man,’ cried Fyllis, raising her right hand.

  Jal-Nish spun around, staring at the blonde-haired child, so thin and pale, yet so determined. Her little chin was pointed and her oddly blank eyes met his unflinchingly. His arm quivered, his fingers twitched, but he could not move his hand down the fraction of an ell required to touch the yearning surface of Reaper. Incredibly, the gift Fyllis had used to protect her family from the scriers, by preventing the wisp-watchers and loop-listeners from talking to the tears, had blocked the God-Emperor from using Reaper.

  ‘Klarm,’ Jal-Nish said over his shoulder. ‘Take her down.’

  ‘I don’t harm children,’ said Klarm, picking up the knoblaggie.

  The flame in Jal-Nish’s eye flared. ‘Just months ago, you swore a sacred oath to me, dwarf.’

  ‘I swore to the man you used to be,’ said Klarm, ‘because Santhenar was in peril and you were the only man with the strength to stop it – or so I thought.’ He glanced at Nish, thoughtfully. ‘But that peril is gone now, and I did not swear to the power-crazed monster you’ve become.’

  ‘No one breaks their oath to me,’ grated Jal-Nish. ‘Especially not the only man I’ve ever trusted with the tears.’ He punched his fist into Reaper and a silver flash lanced towards the dwarf, who threw himself backwards over the edge of the pit.

  ‘You’ll keep,’ said Jal-Nish after a long pause. ‘All of you.’ He dropped his hand onto Gatherer, then both he and the tears faded and disappeared.

  After a considerable hesitation, the allies went to the edge of the pit and looked over. An uncanny flame was slowly spreading across the corroded stone of Morrelune again, though this time it had the same silvery shimmer as Nish had seen in his father’s empty eye socket.

  ‘We’ve got to find out what he’s up to,’ said Flydd that night. ‘And I can only think of one way to do so.’

  The allies, except for Ryll, had gathered on the rim of the pit, near where they’d had the banquet and, save for Maelys, were looking down at the rising and falling lights of Morrelune. Maelys had not joined them; she was sitting on a rock, well to one side, gazing up at the mountains.

  She could only think of home and family now: her poor mother weeping in that terrible cell until she died of grief; her beloved father, Rudigo, seized years ago and tortured, though it had taken him months to die; and crusty old Aunt Bugi, who had held out almost to the end.

  The memory of cranky Aunt Haga, whom Maelys had always thought hated her, slapping down the God-Emperor with a fish pilfered from his Sacred Lake brought a smile to her lips, but when she thought of her little sister it faded again.

  What kind of a monster imprisoned a child in that stinking hell-hole, and how had she survived it? Maelys suspected that Haga, Bugi and Lyma had starved themselves so Fyllis would have enough to eat.

  And her sweet, simple little sister, who had always been frail and who would not step on an ant, had saved Maelys’s life. Fyllis’s blind loyalty brought tears to Maelys’s eyes. Where had she found the courage to stab the mighty God-Emperor, and how had she managed to deny him the use of Reaper at the most critical time?

  It had been too much for her. Fyllis had collapsed the moment Jal-Nish disappeared, and she was now back in the healer’s tent with Haga watching over her anxiously. Maelys wished she was ther
e too.

  She shook her head, slowly realising what Flydd was talking about.

  ‘You want to go back into Morrelune?’ cried Nish.

  ‘No, I don’t,’ said Flydd. ‘But we’ve got to get into Jal-Nish’s mind while he’s using the tears, to see how close he is to mastering them. Once he succeeds it will be too late.’

  ‘Of all the dangerous things you’ve done –’ began Nish.

  ‘No, I can’t do it. That would be far too perilous for all of us.’

  ‘Then who?’ said Nish.

  ‘Only one person has seen into his mind since he’s had the tears,’ said Flydd.

  ‘Who?’ said Nish, frowning.

  ‘No!’ cried Yggur. ‘This time you’re going too far, Flydd. I can’t allow it.’

  Maelys leaned back against the rock and closed her eyes. She couldn’t care less what they were plotting. She’d done her bit, and now that she had her family back, all she wanted was to go home; to make a home for them, and for the baby.

  ‘You must,’ said Flydd. ‘Indeed, Yggur, you’re the only one who can make it happen – if you’ve got any power left.’

  ‘It’s on its last gasp,’ said Yggur. ‘I already told you that.’

  ‘All the more reason to get on with it. Maelys, come here, please.’

  She stood up, her mind still on Fyllis, and Nifferlin. ‘Yes?’

  ‘You’re the only person to ever see into Jal-Nish’s mind –’ said Flydd.

  ‘What?’ The memories came back so sluggishly that for half a minute Maelys did not realise what he was on about. ‘Oh yes, it was when Nish and I went down to the Pit of Possibilities, months ago. My taphloid woke for a moment and I saw Jal-Nish using the tears. He was gloating that he would soon master them, and would then be invulnerable for all time …’ Realising that everyone was staring at her, she said, ‘No! Definitely not. Don’t even imagine –’