by Ian Irvine
He closed his good eye, and momentarily the shimmer in his empty eye socket died as well, though when he looked up it was back, brighter, deeper, and darker. ‘Finally I understand the tears, and I have everything I need to turn myself into an immortal being. It will be good to escape the shackles of this feeble, fragile world – I’ve finished with it, and all of you.
‘You did discover the antithesis to the tears,’ he said mockingly to Flydd and Maelys, ‘but you could never have done anything with it. No human save me can withstand the touch of the tears, and even if anyone could, no human has the strength to overcome the repulsion between Gatherer and Reaper and force them to coalesce into one. The tears can never be destroyed; they are my chthonic fire and they will last forever, just as I will – once I become a being.’
He closed one fist and Maelys staggered, for it felt as though he was squeezing her heart like a lemon. He opened it again and the pain was gone, yet she felt so weak and breathless that she could hardly stand up.
‘Your clan has been a burr under my saddle far too long,’ said Jal-Nish. ‘And I’ve reserved a special torment for you, Maelys Nifferlin – after I become a being. All that time in Stilkeen’s thrall taught me much about pain and I can’t wait to put my lessons into practice.’
He hung the tears about his neck, put one hand into each, and for a moment Jal-Nish looked almost serene. Then he withdrew his hands and closed his fist again.
Maelys gasped, for the squeezing pain in her heart was far worse this time. The room swam before her eyes, her knees gave, and Nish just caught her before her head hit the floor.
Jal-Nish didn’t look at them. Through her daze, she saw that he was moving his hands in complicated patterns above the tears, his movements lifting silvery tendrils off the surface of Gatherer and sending them streaming out towards Reaper, further each time.
What was he doing? She struggled to think, knowing she had to, and fast. Ah, yes! Once he overcame the antipathy of the tears to each other, the antithesis would no longer exist and he could no longer be stopped. They had to act now but Flydd was still twitching on the floor, and there was nothing she could do either. Maelys was as weak as a newborn infant. Had Nish let her go, she would have collapsed.
Nish was staring at her, not even looking at Irisis, and to her amazement his face was wet with tears.
‘I’m sorry; I’m so sorry it’s come to this,’ he said, holding her tightly and smoothing her sweat-damp brow. ‘Everything you and your clan have suffered has been done to you by Father, or by me, yet everything I have I owe to you.
‘From the moment we met you’ve stood by me, not because I deserved it, for I did not, but because you could not do otherwise than keep your word. When you give, you do so without reservation and, no matter what I’ve done, you have always remained steadfast. No man has ever had a better friend, yet I can do nothing to help you when you need it most.’
‘Your being here is a great help,’ she said, clinging to him. Maelys felt someone’s eyes on her and looked up. Irisis was watching them, and she was smiling.
‘I lied, Nish,’ Irisis said softly. ‘Of course I’ve been watching you. I’ve been aching for you, in your terrible grief, ever since my death, for it’s not the one who dies that loses, it’s those who are left behind. Not a day of your imprisonment went by without my checking on you, and it wrung my heart that I could do nothing to ease your pain. Now, at last, you have set me free – and I can do no less for you.’
What did she mean? How was Irisis going to set Nish free? Horror churned Maelys’s insides, for she could only think of one way to do that.
Irisis came to them. She kissed Nish on the lips, and Maelys on the brow, then flashed a savage warrior’s smile, just as the tales said she had done when going recklessly into battle, back in the days of the lyrinx war.
‘Thank you, my love,’ she said softly to Nish, and strode across to Jal-Nish.
He looked up at her indifferently, then bent to his work again, knowing that, while he had the tears, no one could harm him. But she took him by the arm, spun him around and caught him from behind in a bear-hug, squeezing him against her breast.
Jal-Nish went for the tears but she clasped his wrists so tightly that he could not touch either Gatherer or Reaper and, though he struggled furiously, neither could he break her grip. Irisis was half a head taller than him and had always been strong; she was far stronger than a man of Jal-Nish’s age.
‘Reaper!’ he gasped. ‘Burn her from the inside out. Destroy the yellow-haired bitch.’
‘You can’t,’ said Irisis with a mocking laugh. ‘You made a fatal mistake when you raised me from the dead, Jal-Nish.’
Flydd rolled over, came to his knees and got up painfully. The squeezing pain around Maelys’s heart faded and she felt the strength returning to her legs, but she still clung to Nish. It felt wonderful when he held her; for the first time since she had been a little girl and Clan Nifferlin had been attacked, she felt safe.
‘What’s that?’ Jal-Nish’s good eye bulged; his face twisted in the first vestiges of unease.
‘You forgot a fundamental law of nature,’ said Irisis.
‘What law of nature?’ he sneered, jerking his arms fruitlessly.
‘The law that says no one can be killed twice. You had me slain ten years ago and you can’t do it again. There’s nothing you can do to stop me, God-Emperor, but I’m going to stop you, forever.’
‘Your pathetic artisan’s Art was never a patch on my mancery,’ sneered Jal-Nish. ‘You can’t hope to use the tears against me, and as for taking them from me –’
‘Your big mistake,’ said Irisis, holding him without any visible strain, ‘and the one you’ve never learned from, is the assumption that other people want the same things as you. I have no intention of attacking you with the tears, and neither do I want them for myself.’
‘What do you want?’ There was a tremor in his voice now.
Irisis pulled his wrists closer, and closer yet, until the tears were shuddering with antipathy as they tried to repel each other. ‘Can’t you guess?’
‘No!’ he cried. ‘It can’t be done, anyway.’
‘No human has the strength to overcome the repulsion between Gatherer and Reaper and force them to coalesce into one,’ she quoted mockingly. ‘Aren’t you forgetting something? You raised me from the dead, Jal-Nish – I’m no longer human.’
Irisis pushed the tears another ell closer and, though Jal-Nish strained with all his strength, he could not stop her.
‘Besides,’ said Irisis, ‘I was always stronger than you – mentally and physically.’
The repulsive forces between the tears grew ever stronger, and they shook ever more wildly, but she continued to thrust them together until they touched.
Instantly they flared so bright that Maelys could see the outline of Jal-Nish’s bones through his skin, and suddenly the façade of calm and control the God-Emperor had maintained all this time sloughed from him like a carapace shed by a cockroach.
‘Reaper, unbind her soul from her body!’ he raged. ‘Hurl the slut back into the shadow realm where she belongs.’
The quicksilver surface of Reaper boiled, and shining globules burst forth from it, but were drawn back at once and Irisis was unaffected. The tears no longer had the power to affect her in any way.
‘I can’t be killed twice,’ she reminded him. ‘Nor can any spell designed to attack a human touch me.’
He froze and the tears went still. ‘You can’t do this to me!’ cried Jal-Nish. ‘I’m the God-Emperor – I’m going to become a being.’ He twisted to look up at her, and his voice took on what he imagined to be a cajoling tone. ‘Irisis, will – will you come with me? I’ve always admired your beauty, your courage –’
‘You impotent little turd,’ she said. ‘How dare you suck up to me? Your son is ten times the man you were. He’s a real man, and that’s the only kind I ever cared for.’
‘I’ll give you –’
> Irisis’s slender forearm muscles knotted, then she forced Gatherer and Reaper into each other until they coalesced into a two-lobed spheroid of liquid metal that brightened until it appeared to outshine the sun. Maelys was forced to look away, but she had to see. She let go of Nish and peered through her slitted fingers; sweat burst from her forehead; her heart thundered like a great drum.
‘You can have the world,’ cried Jal-Nish, trying to twist around to beseech her. ‘The universe! I’ll make you into a being too.’
Irisis laughed in his face. ‘There’s no coming back from annihilation, Jal-Nish. Not for you, nor the tears either. You’re going to the fate you’ve been trying to avoid all your life.’
‘No, I won’t! I can’t.’
‘It’s a beautiful irony, don’t you agree, that the very objects you killed for, and stole to stave off death, should be the ones to drag you, whining and whimpering, through the worst death any human can suffer, and beyond it to the ultimate oblivion.’
‘I’ll hunt you down in the shadow realm. I’ll make you pay –’
‘You’re not going to the shadow realm, Jal-Nish. Haven’t you worked that out yet? The shadow realm is too good for you. You’re going all the way to eternal nothingness, and I’m delighted to take you with me. Oblivion is all I’ve craved since you slew me so brutally.
‘Goodbye, dearest Xervish,’ she said, ‘and you, beautiful Maelys. Farewell, sweet Nish, the love of my life, but not beyond it. I’m taking Jal-Nish where no one in the Three Worlds, nor the shadow realm, can follow.’
He struggled furiously, and for an anguished moment Maelys thought he was going to free himself after all, but Irisis tightened her crushing grip on him.
‘I’m afraid,’ said Maelys, clinging to Nish for comfort and never wanting to let go. ‘What’s going to happen if the tears do annihilate each other?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said, holding her.
‘They’ll destroy the whole palace. And us. They’ve got to. All that power has to go somewhere.’
‘At least we’ll be together.’
‘I don’t want to die with you – I want to live with you.’
Irisis crushed the coalesced tears, now an almost perfect sphere, tighter to Jal-Nish’s chest, squeezing it until it passed through his ribs into the region where any normal man would have had a heart. Jal-Nish shrieked as Gatherer gathered the very life and soul out of him, then slumped bonelessly as Reaper brutally reaped it.
‘Farewell, false God-Emperor,’ Irisis cried. ‘Annihilation, take him!’ and she tossed the revolving sphere into the air.
The single tear drifted upwards and flared so brightly that Maelys, squinting through the slits between her fingers, could see nothing but a molten ball of fire whose heat made the stone floor fume underfoot. With a shrill wail, the fire and light were sucked into the ball, and the rag-doll remnants of Jal-Nish too, until he disappeared like smoke drawn back into a pipe.
Irisis opened her hands and the tear settled and floated in front of her in mid-air, slowly rotating, but quiescent now. She stood there, gazing at Maelys, Nish and Flydd, then gave him a fond, parting smile. ‘I told you that I had a destiny after death.’
‘I never believed you,’ said Flydd, and there were bright tears in his old eyes. ‘But you were right. You were always right. And I can say it now …’
‘Yes?’ she said.
‘That day ten years ago was also the worst day of my life, for you were the only woman I ever loved.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Irisis said, looking ever so slightly uncomfortable for the first time. ‘You must have been with thousands of women.’
‘I’ve had my share,’ he conceded, ‘but only one mattered. You were the only one I cared about, and even after you cast me aside and took up with Nish, I never stopped loving you.’
‘You’re a good man, Xervish,’ she said wistfully, ‘but this has to stop.’ She cupped her hands around the tear and pressed gently, and it brightened again, and swelled.
‘Wait!’ cried Maelys. ‘What happens when Gatherer and Reaper annihilate each other and explode?’
‘The coalesced tear doesn’t explode, it implodes,’ said Irisis. ‘And all that power doesn’t have to go somewhere. It has to go nowhere. Farewell, my friends.’
She crushed the tear between her palms. The dazzling globe shrank to a pinpoint and she was drawn into it, smiling at them, shrinking until she and the tear could no longer be seen. With a little pop, it vanished ... and Irisis had gone to a place from which there could be no returning.
Nish stared after her for a long time, then gave Maelys a small, uncertain smile and took her hand. ‘Irisis was always right,’ he echoed. ‘I’m glad she’s found peace at last.’
‘Ah, Irisis, Irisis,’ said Flydd, rubbing his eyes. The ceiling gave a creaking groan and cracked from one side to the other. ‘We’d better go.’ He continued to stare at the point where she had disappeared, then shook himself and took Maelys’s free hand. ‘Morrelune was built with the tears, and now they’re gone there’s not much holding it up.’
With an almighty crash, the metal spire toppled and fell. They ran out to the edge of the ninth level and saw that the spire had crashed across the gap and its tip now rested in the Sacred Lake, which had begun to spill down into the moat surrounding Morrelune.
‘Do you think we can walk across?’ said Flydd.
‘We’d better,’ said Maelys. ‘There won’t be time to run all the way down, then climb up.’
They teetered along the flattened spire in the moonlight, and clambered down onto the cracked paving next to the abandoned feast tables. A mass of people were running their way.
‘What did Irisis mean about her destiny?’ said Maelys.
Yggur and Tulitine were coming towards them, and behind them were several other people who could not be identified in the dark, apart from Lilis’s slender figure and Yulla’s sack-like form.
‘Nish and I talked about it that night we camped in the mountains,’ said Flydd, ‘after we stole the Seneschal of Taranta’s best wine.’
‘Irisis believed that her destiny could only be fulfilled after her death.’
‘That’s why she never expected to survive the war. And if Jal-Nish hadn’t killed her, she would never have been able to bring him down, or destroy the tears, because no human could have done it.’
Nish did not reply, and after a long pause Maelys said, ‘She must have been a wonderful woman. It’s no wonder …’ She glanced at Nish, then away hastily.
‘She was a beautiful, warm, wonderful part of my life,’ said Nish, wiping his face.
‘Of all our lives,’ Flydd added.
‘And I’ll never forget her,’ Nish added, ‘but she’s gone, forever.’
‘It’s over,’ says Flydd. ‘It’s finally over.’ He looked around, sniffing the air like a dog on the hunt and added, ‘That’s strange.’
‘What?’ says Maelys and Nish at the same time.
‘Just for a moment, I thought I sensed a faint, distant field.’
‘A field?’ said Maelys.
‘The force created by nodes, and the source of most mancers’ power.’
‘But with Tiaan’s destruction of the nodes at the end of the war,’ said Nish, ‘all the fields disappeared, leaving Father, with the tears, in command of almost all the Secret Art.’
‘And now the tears are gone, the fields are coming back,’ said Flydd. ‘Slowly, I suspect, and they probably won’t be as strong as before, but even so, they’ll be available to all who can master the Secret Art – not just to one corrupt man.’
‘And just in time,’ said the Numinator from the darkness, ‘to complete my project.’
FIFTY-FIVE
Maelys had no chance to run, for the Numinator, now right behind her, grabbed her wrist.
‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘I’m going to take very good care of you – and your unborn child.’
‘It won’t do you any good, Maigraith,�
� said Tulitine, her granddaughter.
‘Don’t call me Maigraith!’ snapped the Numinator. ‘It is a Faellem name and I won’t have it.’
‘Numinator is equally inappropriate,’ said Tulitine coldly. ‘The Numinous One indeed! You’re no more a being than Jal-Nish was a God-Emperor. You were frauds, both of you – and Maigraith it is.’
‘Well, I’m having the child,’ Maigraith ground out. ‘Two hundred and twenty years I’ve worked on my great project and I’m not giving it up now.’
‘You won’t find what you’re looking for here,’ said Tulitine. ‘If you recall, and I’m sure you were watching, Yalkara held the same view until the moment she touched Maelys’s belly. She seemed to age a hundred years, and then she said, “I have nothing left.” As you of all people know, Charon don’t give up lightly.’
‘I don’t ever give up,’ said Maigraith, ‘and having the field back will make it so much easier.’
With a flick of her fingers she conjured up a hollow dagger of fuming ice, much like the stiletto she’d used to test Maelys’s fertility in the Nightland, save that the core of the dagger was as green as atatusk blood and its point as narrow as a needle. Before Maelys could move, Maigraith had pressed the tip through her shirt into her belly. Maelys felt a burning, freezing pain, then the point was withdrawn and inside was a small thread of blood.
She drew the blood up into the green core, which slowly changed to grey. Maigraith went the same colour. ‘No! It isn’t possible.’
‘Yet it’s happened,’ said Tulitine, ‘and there’s nothing you can do about it.’
Maigraith studied the grey core again, and her shoulders slumped. ‘It’s certain. No wonder she gave up.’
‘What’s the matter?’ cried Maelys, clutching at her belly. ‘Is there something wrong with the baby?’
‘Terribly wrong!’
‘What? Tell me!’ She took Maigraith by the coat and shook her. ‘You’ve got to tell me.’
‘It’s entirely old human,’ said Maigraith.