by Ian Irvine
‘No one else can do it. You must get back into his mind and see how close he is, so we can find a way to stop him.’
‘I couldn’t do it again if I wanted to,’ said Maelys. ‘It happened by itself. I didn’t plan it.’
‘The taphloid was the critical factor,’ said Flydd. ‘And it was originally Yggur’s. Therefore, if anyone can make it duplicate what it did in the Pit of Possibilities, he can.’
FIFTY-TWO
The tent had been set up on the narrow strip of paving between the curving edge of the pit of Morrelune and the oval sweep of the Sacred Lake, and Maelys was sitting cross-legged on a folded blanket, on the floor. The hour was late and it was almost pitch-dark inside the tent – to see with the taphloid she had to block out her natural sight completely.
It did not block her other senses, though – Maelys could hear waves lapping against the stone edge of the lake, and every so often a marshy odour drifted across from the fringing reed beds. Once or twice there came a hissing sound from the pit, or the tumble of a dislodged pebble down its sides.
She blanked out the sounds and smells and, holding the taphloid lightly between her clenched hands as Yggur had instructed her, closed her eyes. All sounds from outside faded, and shortly she made out the distant, hackle-raising song of the tears.
Almost immediately she envisaged the faint outline of a tear, though she could not tell which one. They were made of nihilium, she recalled, the purest substance in the world and one that held the print of the Art more tightly than anything else could. The tear was floating above a pedestal that had been rough-sawn from black meteoritic iron; it resembled the iron from which the caduceus had been made.
Jal-Nish was not looking directly into the tear this time. From the way the dark background was moving, he must have been walking around the pedestal, watching it from the corner of his eye.
He was in the topmost level of Morrelune, which was open on all sides. The ceiling was supported by intersecting circles of slender columns made from a golden stone polished to waxy smoothness, though unlike the rest of Morrelune the stone here was hardly stained at all, and only slightly corroded.
The ninth level was still a beautiful, sparsely furnished space, but thickly coated in dust now and with hairline cracks running across the ceiling. A large brown stain marred the floor beneath a hook mounted in the ceiling, where Jal-Nish’s decaying body had been hung up by his toes.
‘I thought I understood the tears,’ he mused as he walked. ‘Once they would do exactly as I ordered, but since Klarm has held them they’ve become capricious. Is that because I allowed him to use them – or can it be the wilful nature of the tears themselves? Or can they only have one master?’
He made several more circuits, the good hand and the replaced one clasped behind his back.
‘Thirteen years I’ve spent prying into their secrets,’ he murmured, ‘and yet, full understanding still eludes me. I’ve got to know how they were formed from the destruction of the node at Snizort, but only two people ever knew. One is dead and the other, Flydd, will never tell me.’
Jal-Nish paced between the columns agitatedly. Across and back, as if trying to steel himself for something he’d never had the courage to do. Abruptly he turned, strode to a blue curtain and wrenched it aside.
Dust sifted to the floor and Maelys saw a rectangular coffin, made from crystal as clear as glass, standing on its end. Inside was the naked body of a beautiful, tall and curvaceous woman; she had eyes of the most brilliant blue and hair as yellow as corn. Had it not been for the thin line running around her throat she might have been asleep.
It was Irisis, and not only had she been beautiful, clever, brave and loyal, she had also sacrificed her life to try to save Nish. No wonder he had loved her so much; maybe he still did. How can I compete with that? Maelys half-rose, embarrassed and wondering where that thought had come from. She had been over her infatuation with Nish for months; she still cared for him, but only as a friend. Definitely no more than that.
‘Dare I commit the ultimate, forbidden crime?’ Jal-Nish was saying when she sat down again. ‘Irisis was with Flydd in Snizort when the tears were created. Can I raise her from the dead long enough to rip the secret from her lying tongue?’
He began to pace again, back and forth, back and forth.
Maelys couldn’t bear to watch him any longer. With a shudder, she dropped the taphloid onto the floor, and instantly she was back in the tent by the lake.
‘Flydd?’ she said softly.
He drew the tent flap open and she made out Yggur behind him, moving painfully because of his many half-healed burns. Nish was further back, pacing as anxiously as his father. She went out into the starlight.
‘The tears are acting oddly and Jal-Nish can’t work out why,’ said Maelys to Flydd. ‘He believes something strange happened when they were formed and, since he knows he’ll never get it out of you, he’s planning to … do the other thing.’
‘What other thing?’ snapped Flydd. ‘Speak plainly, girl! We don’t have time.’
‘He was looking at Irisis, in the crystal coffin,’ said Maelys, avoiding Nish’s eye. He made a keening sound and she went on, desperate to get the words out while she still could. ‘He’s thinking about … about raising her from the dead so he can question her about the tears.’
Nish choked, stumbled away and she heard him throwing up over the edge of the pit.
‘What did happen when the tears were formed, Flydd?’ said Tulitine.
Flydd gestured her near and the others followed. ‘It was a long time ago, at the battle for Snizort,’ he said quietly, sitting down at the nearest table and picking up a half-full wine glass abandoned during the interrupted feast. ‘The lyrinx had excavated a city into the tar pits there. They put in a node-drainer to prevent us drawing from the field of the Snizort node to power our clankers and air-floaters, and to take that power for themselves.
‘The Council of Scrutators made a device to destroy the node-drainer, and ordered me to take it into Snizort, but the order was a disguised death sentence from my enemy, Chief Scrutator Ghorr. He didn’t believe anyone could get into a city of a hundred thousand lyrinx, and out again, and to make absolutely sure of me, the device he gave me was booby-trapped. It was designed for an artisan, not a mancer, and if I had tried to use it, it would have killed me.’
He gulped the wine and continued. ‘Irisis was an artisan, of course, so I had her work the device instead. Unfortunately the booby-trap failed and all the power of the node flowed the wrong way, destroying the node itself.’
‘But not utterly,’ said Yggur.
‘No – the blast distilled the essence of the node into two nihilium tears, which Jal-Nish stole, and because he killed his own men to conceal that he had them, and ever since has used them for debased purposes, they became the Profane Tears.’
‘What doesn’t he know about them?’ said Yggur. ‘What’s he trying to find out?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Flydd. ‘But if he succeeds he’ll be impregnable and immortal, so we’ve got to strike soon, and hard. Maelys, you must find out what he’s up to.’
‘What if he sees me watching him?’ Maelys could not stop thinking about the narrow seam around Irisis’s neck. Had Haga and Fyllis not acted so quickly, she, Maelys, would now be preserved in another crystal box with an identical seam around her throat, where her severed head had been reattached. ‘You can’t imagine how much he hates me, Xervish.’
‘I can imagine it, but if he gets what he’s looking for it’s the end for us all,’ said Flydd after a long interval. ‘And you’re the only one who can do it.’
‘All right!’ She crept back to the tent.
When Maelys located Jal-Nish a few minutes later, he was crouched over the iron pedestal. Now both tears stood on it, but the uncertain, pacing God-Emperor of before was gone; he was confident and commanding again. What had he seen in the intervening time? Could he have raised Irisis, and wrung the truth out of h
er so quickly? It hardly seemed possible – and yet, with the tears, anything might be possible.
Plunging both hands into one of the tears – Gatherer, surely – he said cajolingly, ‘Cryl-Nish, my son, I was in pain earlier – the most terrible pain from the torments Stilkeen had inflicted upon me. A madness came over me, and for a few minutes I was out of my mind, but I’ve come to my senses now.’
Lifting the tear, he held it up before him, and momentarily Maelys thought she saw Nish staring at his father, but Jal-Nish moved the tear closer and the image disappeared.
She shivered in the cool night. Could that really be happening? No, Nish wasn’t in Morrelune; he was just outside the tent.
‘Join me and become my lieutenant, beloved son, and all will be forgiven,’ said Jal-Nish to Gatherer. ‘I give you my word that I will restore Irisis to you, whole and unblemished, and never threaten her again as long as I shall live.’
Another figure appeared within Gatherer, but this time Maelys saw it clearly. It was Irisis, wearing a flowing gown of blue silk. There was no seam around her throat; she was gliding gracefully around a large chamber, looking back at someone and smiling, and her smile lit up the room. No wonder Nish can never get over her, she thought. Maelys wanted to wish them well together, but the thought nearly choked her.
‘No!’ cried Flydd from outside the tent. ‘Nish, he sent that image to us deliberately. He’s manipulating you, as he’s done so many times before. You can’t –’
So Jal-Nish had sent the image of Irisis to the others. Did he know she was watching him? Suddenly Maelys felt exhausted, and so cold that the taphloid could not warm her. She allowed it to spill from her fingers, breaking her envisioning, and crawled to the flap.
‘Let me go!’ hissed Nish. ‘It’s nothing to do with you. This is between me and him.’
‘Don’t be a fool,’ said Flydd. ‘It’s exactly what he wants you to do.’
‘And I’m still going to do it.’
Maelys scrabbled out of the tent and saw Flydd wrestling with Nish in the starlight. He fought Flydd off, scrambled over the edge of the pit and she heard him going down the steep slope like a madman, heading for the palace.
‘Isn’t anyone going to stop him?’ said Maelys in a small voice.
‘We’ll never catch him,’ said Yggur.
‘He spent ten years in prison, brooding about Irisis,’ said Flydd, shaking his head, ‘and I’ve often wondered if the experience had turned his mind. No wonder he isn’t interested in becoming emperor. He’s totally obsessed; he’s got to have her, no matter what it costs. He can’t think about anything else.’
‘What is it going to cost?’ Maelys whispered.
‘More than I can bear to think about,’ said Flydd. ‘Would you wait here, please?’
He drew Yggur and Tulitine aside, leaving Maelys standing by the tent, wondering how everything could have fallen to pieces so quickly.
She made out a low, furious argument, and shortly they returned.
‘This can’t be allowed to happen,’ Flydd was saying. ‘Whether Nish joins his father, or even takes the tears for his own, they can’t be allowed to exist any longer. That was our original aim up on Mistmurk Mountain, if you recall – to find the antithesis to the tears and use it to destroy them. We lost track of that purpose after Stilkeen came, but we have to get rid of the tears, and surely, with the best minds on Santhenar gathered here, we can find the way.’
‘Suppose you do find the way,’ said Maelys, trying to think through the implications. ‘What if Nish is near the tears when they’re destroyed?’
‘The conflagration that formed them laid waste to everything within half a league. I can’t imagine their destruction will be any less violent.’
‘But Nish would be killed, Xervish!’
‘I expect he would be,’ Flydd said evenly. ‘Yet the tears must be destroyed, or Santhenar’s oppression will never end. Surely we agree on that?’
‘Yes,’ said Yggur slowly, and so did Tulitine, and Malien, whom Maelys had not realised was there.
‘And if Nish has gone over to his father’s side, to get her back, he’s made his choice,’ said Flydd, sounding more like his old, hard self every minute. ‘Well, let’s see what our collective minds can do. Come away – we’re too close to Morrelune. Who knows what spying devices Jal-Nish might be able to activate, now he holds the tears again.’
They headed out into the middle of the plain, but Maelys did not follow; she was too stunned. How, after all they had done together, could Flydd be talking about sacrificing Nish? She sat on a boulder and stared across the Sacred Lake, feeling helpless and trapped. Even if Nish had gone to Morrelune for a woman raised from the dead – an abomination Maelys could not bear to think about – she wasn’t giving up on him. He meant too much to her and she had to do something.
‘Maelys?’ Flydd had come back. ‘Get a move on; there’s no time to waste.’
‘No!’
‘I beg your pardon!’ he said in the famous scrutator’s voice that few people dared to defy.
‘I’m not going with you. You can all go to hell.’
Flydd raised the right half of his continuous eyebrow. ‘Very well. I don’t expect you’d have had anything useful to contribute, anyway.’
‘Probably not. Go away.’
As soon as he was out of sight, she returned to the tent and took up her taphloid, fuming. Nothing to contribute, indeed! Maelys had also been thinking about the antithesis to the tears, and the search that had taken them all the way to the Tower of a Thousand Steps.
The Numinator had said that she hadn’t heard of the antithesis but, when Maelys had asked the question for the second time, the Numinator had replied, All knowledge collected by the God-Emperor’s spies passes through Gatherer. Look within the tears.
Look within the tears. It had seemed such a useless answer at the time, but the more she dwelt on it, the more she thought that the Numinator had been telling the truth.
Dare she use the taphloid one final time, to peer into the tears themselves? If she was to do anything for Nish, she had to, but what if Jal-Nish was waiting? He had tailored Gatherer to be the perfect spy, and if she looked, he must surely catch her, and kill her.
Nonetheless, Maelys had to try. If Jal-Nish wasn’t stopped, the empire would be in his thrall, as it had been for the past ten years, and no one would suffer more than the surviving members of Clan Nifferlin.
She used the taphloid as she had done before, and saw Jal-Nish at once, which was worrying. Yet even if it was a trap, she had to go on.
He was sitting at a circular table carved from green stone, writing in a journal. The tears must be to his left, on their pedestal, though she could not see them from here. She could not see Nish, either, and her heart gave a hard thump, but settled; he would not have reached the palace yet. It might take him half an hour to clamber down the steep walls of the pit, cross the water and climb up to the ninth level.
Over the past ten years, Jal-Nish had written in a beautiful copperplate hand, I have absorbed all captured powers, forces and Arts into the tears, to strengthen them even further, but I did not understand what I was doing. That was always my failing, as Flydd told me many years ago. I was greedy; I snatched at the power without troubling to understand it.
The nihilium tears were created with no power nor Art of their own, but an infinite ability to absorb the Art from elsewhere, and I was so eager to make them the mightiest artefacts on Santhenar that it did not occur to me to only absorb compatible Arts. Is that why the tears are increasingly unstable? It’s a lesson my study of the Histories should have taught me.
But not just unstable, Jal-Nish wrote. I worked so hard to make each tear different that I enhanced Gatherer and Reaper’s intrinsic antipathy to each other, and it grows worse each day. They cannot trust one another. They no longer talk to each other, nor cooperate unless I force them, and whenever I carry them about my neck I can feel their churning rage. If not for their mu
tual repulsion, which is far more powerful than trying to hold two north poles of a magnet together, I believe they would have attacked each other by now, and what would happen if they did? It does not bear thinking about.
He scattered fine sand over the page to absorb the surplus ink, tapped it into a bowl and closed the ledger.
‘No matter,’ he said softly, ‘Once I know exactly how they were created, I will be able to resolve their mutual antipathy, and then I will have the power to become a being.’
As he spoke, all the clues Maelys had been puzzling over slid together and the answer sprang into her mind – the tears must be their own antithesis. Gatherer and Reaper would have to be forced together so powerfully that their mutual repulsion was overcome and they would merge into one roiling mass which, overburdened with self-antipathy, would be annihilated.
She wasn’t planning to tell Flydd that, though. He was so determined to end the power of the tears that he might act without care for the consequences. But Maelys cared very much, and she was going to save Nish, if she could, then annihilate the tears – assuming she could find a way to overcome their resistance without killing herself and everyone around her.
It was time to go into Morrelune.
FIFTY-THREE
Nish had come to Morrelune because the matter had to be ended, once and forever … even if he must commit the worst crime of all.
He paced slowly across the floor of the ninth level, struggling to control the panic he always felt before a confrontation with his father, for in the past Nish had lost every one of these battles. He wiped sweaty palms on his pants and took several deep, slow breaths, trying to steady his racketing heart. I can do this, he thought. I’ve got to, else Maelys and all her clan will die.
His father was sitting at the circular greenstone table, though he no longer wore the platinum mask that had concealed his mutilated face for thirteen years. A closed journal lay in front of him, and a quill beside it. He appeared healthier than he had at the feast, less decomposed, though there was still a tinge of green to his complexion and a dribble of thick fluid from his eye sockets.