by Ian Irvine
The cut stones faded into blackness, and all Karan could sense as Yggur flew south, and hour followed hour, was a desperate, plodding weariness and Idlis’s stale sweat. Yggur turned and headed north again, along the western edge of a snowy range. It was miserably cold.
Then suddenly she picked up what Sulien was feeling—plod, plod, her belly empty and her feet aching, her legs so weary that it was all she could do to keep moving up this eternal, slippery slope. Her back hurt low down and her head was throbbing.
Sulien? sent Karan, but the sending failed.
Now Sulien was above ground and Karan saw what she was seeing. It was raining heavily and the sweaty odour of Idlis was gone. They were in the ruins of a once-great city, though clearly it had been abandoned for centuries. Every surface was inches deep in moss, the roofs and many of the walls had fallen long ago and the roots of gigantic trees had thrust the paving and building stones apart and piled them in great, overgrown heaps.
Sulien limped up a broad ramp. Idlis’s gaunt, awkward figure was a few yards ahead, walking more slowly and jerkily than usual.
“She doesn’t seem to be his prisoner,” said Karan. “But where is he taking her?”
Yggur did not reply.
Sulien and Idlis went up steps that might have formed one side of a flat-topped pyramid, climbing until they were as high as the surrounding treetops. The wind was strong there, driving the rain before it in hissing sheets.
Sulien plodded across the flat top, a distance of about forty yards. Karan sensed her utter exhaustion. Some distance ahead, beyond the pyramid, a series of large public buildings were still partly roofed. Idlis led Sulien that way. But had he taken her there to protect her, or betray her? To left and right there were no trees now, for this part of the city was partly flooded, just broken walls and crumbling towers rising above still green waters.
They were trudging down the other side when a harsh cry rang out far to their left. There they are! On the pyramid! Take them!
“Yggur, the Whelm have found her!” cried Karan. “We’re too late.”
16
AND CARRIED HER AWAY
Sulien looked around dazedly. How had she ended up here?
Their trek through the tunnels had lasted for days, and it had been so exhausting that she had slipped into a state where she took nothing in, just plodded after Idlis through the endless dark, drinking when he said, “Drink!” eating when he said, “Eat!” and scurrying away from the light of his fading lightglass when he allowed her the briefest of toilet stops. He did not seem in need of food and only drank water once a day. He was more emaciated than ever; she could not imagine what drove him so relentlessly.
Occasionally he had stopped, crouched down and studied her, and said, “Sleep!”
Sulien had crumpled to the floor of the tunnel and slept at once, but when he shook her awake it felt as though only a few minutes had passed. She could not guess how far they had gone. It might have been twenty miles or a hundred, though they had laboured uphill most of that time and must be in the mountains by now.
Finally, when her old boots were falling apart, the soles of her feet were covered in blisters and her weary legs could take no more, Idlis stopped, cocked his bony head and said, “We’re here!”
Sulien lacked the strength to ask where here was or what was going to happen now. She stood in the stony tunnel, rocking on the soles of her feet to ease the pain, her stomach cramped in terror. Was he going to betray her to the Whelm? Or sacrifice her to some hideous deity only they would worship? Why else would he have brought her all this way?
He climbed a crumbling stair that ended at a stone ceiling only four feet above the top step. Idlis used the point of his knife to clean the accumulated dirt out of the joins around a small square slab then put his palms flat on it, straightened his legs and heaved. With a grunt he raised the slab and slid it to the right.
Sulien saw grey daylight, then muddy water poured in on Idlis’s head, drenching him and splashing her. It was icy. He wiped his eyes, climbed up through the hole and reached down for her.
Sulien shook her head. “I can manage.” After staring at her for a moment—he was always staring; he did not seem to know that it was bad manners—Idlis moved away.
After much scrabbling and gasping she found herself on an expanse of moss-covered paving. They were in the overgrown ruins of a city whose broken buildings extended further than she could see. The icy rain was unrelenting here. Pools of water lay everywhere, and the ruins had a sodden, stagnant smell.
“Where are we?” she said hoarsely. She scooped water from the nearest pool and drank it from her hand. It made her teeth ache and the cold burned all the way down her throat.
Though the light was dim, Idlis put on his slitted-bone eye covers and checked all around, his prominent larynx bobbing. He looked agitated.
“Are your people here already?” whispered Sulien.
He looked down at her. “Not yet, little one. But they will come, and I don’t know what to do.”
“What is this place?”
He opened his mouth, shuddered, closed it again and said forlornly, “Hessular.”
“I haven’t heard of it,” said Sulien.
“It died a very long time ago.” His larynx oscillated wildly. “No, Hessular was murdered.”
Clearly it was painful to talk about. But for the past month she had been at the Whelm’s mercy, taken where they wanted, told nothing, forced to be “a good little Whelm” and, save for the past days on the run with Idlis, given a daily thrashing to teach her to be a better Whelm. She needed to know.
Her teeth chattered. After days in the mild underground it was miserably cold here. Her hair was sodden and water was running down her neck and chest and back. “How can a city be murdered?”
He led her to a small circular stone building, no bigger than a cottage, with a stone dome for a roof. The doors and windows had rotted away but the roof was sound. He gestured to a crumbling bench inside the door, protected from the rain. Sulien sat.
Idlis stalked back and forth, his joints click-clacking.
“My people were a peaceful folk when they dwelt here, thousands of years ago. Salliban was vast, they were few and there was plenty of room for all. No one else wanted our land, for it was too wet and cold to farm … until a spice trader from wicked Thurkad discovered that a miraculous healing potion could be brewed from growths found on certain trees in Tardigraal.”
“Where’s that?” said Sulien.
“It was a small upland forest in the centre of Salliban, fifty miles south of here. The potion was worth a fortune, though only if he could keep the source secret. If everyone knew, it would be grown in other cold wet places and his monopoly would be lost.
“He tried to buy Tardigraal, but our people would not sell. The land belongs to everyone; no one has the right to sell it.” He spat out the word as though it was offensive.
“What was his name?” said Sulien.
“Skunder Krespin!” Idlis hissed. “And he was determined to have his prize, for it could make him the richest man in the world. He mortgaged everything he owned and borrowed every grint he could, enough to hire a mercenary army to attack Salliban and seize Tardigraal. Our ancestors fought back, but we were a peaceful folk then and it takes many years to master the arts of war.
“Because my people looked different to other old humans, Krespin declared they were subhuman aliens who wanted to take over the world, and ordered them exterminated. His mercenaries poisoned the water cisterns of Hessular, our only city, and in two days half the Whelm were dead. Then the enemy blocked the exits and attacked from all sides, killing everyone they saw. Of the twenty thousand who had dwelt here, less than a dozen escaped.”
“But, that’s evil!” cried Sulien, shaking with outrage.
“And not the worst. Krespin’s mercenaries brought in corpses riddled with northern diseases Salliban had never known, and left them throughout the land. Uncounted thousands of my peo
ple died, but no one else cared—he had hired chroniclers and tellers to spread false stories about us.”
“I don’t believe it!” Sulien said stoutly. “No chronicler or teller would do such a thing. The Histories are truth!”
“Chroniclers and tellers can be bought like anyone else.”
“Not anyone!” cried Sulien. “Daddy can’t be bought. The Histories are his life!”
“One of Krespin’s paid stories became a Great Tale, one of the Twenty-Three!” Idlis said, choking in his fury. “Downfall of the Beasts, it’s called. Do you know it?”
“No,” whispered Sulien. This went against everything Llian had taught her and everything she believed in, but in her heart she knew Idlis was telling the truth.
“Every word of that tale is a lie!” he choked. “And it did us more damage than the ruin of Hessular; it destroyed us in the eyes of the world.” He took a long, rasping breath and continued.
“By then Krespin was sickeningly rich but he wanted Salliban for himself, so his family could control Tardigraal for ever. His mercenaries hunted my people like dogs until they could take no more. They fled east over the mountains into the miserable frozen steppes of Shazabba, a land so cold no one else cared to live there.”
“I’m sorry,” said Sulien. “Does his family still control Tardigraal?”
Idlis let out a harsh bark; no one would have described it as laughter. “He brought in one disease too many—his workers unwittingly spread a fungus that transformed the healing growths into poisonous ones. Hundreds died from his healing potions before he was arrested, his wealth confiscated, and he was put to a cruel death.” He bared his teeth in a vindictive rictus.
“Oh,” Sulien said softly.
“But it was too late for us.” He stared blankly at her. “Krespin taught my people a cruel lesson in power and powerlessness. The survivors vowed they would never be powerless again, but they were so reviled that no one would deal with them. They saw only one remedy—to take a mighty master to protect them. In return they would obey his every command, without ever questioning.”
“Even if he ordered them to do terrible things?”
“What could my people do that was more terrible than what was done to them? But their search was long and painful until, at the time of the Zain rebellion two thousand years ago, a chance came to do the great Charon, Rulke, a favour. My ancestors did it gladly, and in the heat of his gratitude they offered their undying service, and he accepted. They changed their name to Ghâshâd and—”
“My father is Zain,” said Sulien frostily. Llian was a great teller and she loved him dearly, but he was also hopelessly impractical and constantly getting into trouble. She sensed that he was in peril now, with no one to help him.
“And the Zain broke their word to our master,” Idlis said with a curl of his scarred grey lip.
“That was two thousand years ago.”
“It would not matter if it was two million years. Whelm do not forget or forgive. My people see your father as another treacherous, lying teller like the one who wrote Downfall of the Beasts—”
“Daddy’s not treacherous and he’s not a liar!” cried Sulien, leaping to her feet and thumping him in the ribs with her little fists. “Take that back.”
Idlis took a step back. “I didn’t say he was, little one; I said that’s how my people see him. Since our betrayal we see all chroniclers and tellers the same way.”
“You Whelm have done terrible things. Things just as bad as Krespin did to you.”
“But never out of greed, lust, hunger for power or any other human failing. We have only ever done bad things because our master, who is greater and more far-seeing than us, ordered them done.”
“That’s a coward’s excuse! If your perfect master ordered you to kill me, would you do it, even though you swore to protect me with your life?”
After a very long pause, Idlis said, “If I had sworn to serve my master before I swore to protect you, then yes, I would have to kill you.”
“Then you’re a hypocrite and an oath-breaker!”
“I would not do it gladly. But an oath is an oath.”
“What if you’d sworn to protect me first?”
His grey face went even greyer. He lurched to the bench and sat down hard, each breath like coarse paper being torn to shreds. “I … I would have to repudiate my oath to my master and become an outcast for what little remained of my miserable life.”
His agony burned into her soul. She took a slow step towards him, saying softly, “Why little?”
“My people would hunt me down, flay me alive then torture me to death for scorning my master.”
“Oh!” said Sulien. “Have you sworn to a master?”
“You know I have; it’s in your father’s Great Tale. I swore to obey Rulke.”
“But he’s dead.”
“And I am masterless. Bereft. Less than a man. As pathetic a creature as the least of my miserable ancestors.”
“You used to serve Yggur. Did you rep-repudiate your oath to him?”
“Not exactly,” said Idlis.
“Aha!” cried Sulien. “You broke your oath!”
“I did not!” he said hoarsely. “My ancestors’ original oath to Rulke bound every Whelm, or Ghâshâd, for as long as he lived. It superseded our oath to Yggur, and when Rulke returned from imprisonment in the Nightland we had to cleave to our oath and resume serving him. We did so gladly.”
Sulien sensed something high up that made her shudder. She looked out through the doorway. Idlis had been right: her gift was growing.
“What is the matter?” said Idlis.
“It felt like something was watching us.”
“Some thing? Not my people?”
“What I felt wasn’t Whelm. And it was up in the sky.”
“A bird? An eagle?”
“Much bigger than any bird.”
“Nothing much bigger than a large bird can fly.”
“It’s got mancery.” Sulien did not know how she knew that; she had just sensed it.
“I’m not troubled by any creature in the sky,” said Idlis.
“I am. Shouldn’t we go underground?”
“All the tunnels here are flooded. We’ll cross the drowned part of the city using the broken walls, then go underground again. Be careful. The moss is very slippery.”
She followed him along a series of uneven mossy walls, then up to the top of a stepped pyramid. Then stopped, shivering in her sodden clothes. “The Whelm are coming!”
“And I don’t think we can escape.” Idlis was breathing heavily, the air tearing in and out of his ragged throat. He lowered his voice, “But if you do, you must find a teacher and master your gift before it’s too late.”
There was no time to ask what he meant, for she sensed them all around now. The Whelm nation was closing in on Hessular from all directions and, despite all Idlis had said about holding to his oath, he was cracking under the strain.
She eyed him surreptitiously. His movements were even more jerky than before, and he was unsteady on his feet. Was he signalling to the other Whelm? The breath clotted in her throat and she felt a stabbing pain in the middle of her chest. He was about to betray her.
Yetchah’s scratchy voice soared. “There they are! On the pyramid! Take them!”
There was nothing Sulien could do. The Whelm had encircled Hessular just as Skunder Krespin’s mercenaries had long ago. They would force her to link to the Merdrun, then Gergrig would order them to kill her, and they would.
She turned, ran down the pyramid and bolted along the ragged top of a wall that ran off to the right. At the corner she stopped, teetering, her arms windmilling, then raced on. If she could reach the next corner before Idlis came after her she could run along the wall that branched off it, then up and across the great arch of stone beyond and down the other side, and out of the drowned part of the ruined city into the forest.
A trio of Whelm, led by Yetchah, were scrambling along a mossy wal
l to her left. They weren’t as fast as Sulien but they were closer to the corner. She hurtled on, leaping from one slippery block of stone to another, and gained the corner only a couple of yards in the lead.
Ahead was a gap of five feet to the next section of wall, and a fall of twenty feet onto rubble if she missed it. If she fell she would certainly break bones, and possibly die. She sprang the gap, landed hard and off balance, fell forwards and struck hard stone with both knees. The pain was awful; for a few seconds she could not stand up. She clung desperately to the top of the wall, her heart crashing from one side of her chest to the other. It had been too close!
The three Whelm were approaching from the left and another man, a stocky Whelm with little black eyes, was closing in from the right. He and Yetchah would arrive at almost the same time, each desperate to claim her as their prize.
Sulien got up, gasping from the pain in her knees. Yetchah and the stocky man hurtled towards the corner and one another. Sulien prayed that they would collide.
Yetchah slowed, allowing the stocky Whelm to reach the corner first. But he was going too fast; he could neither stop nor turn the corner, for the crumbly stone was loose and his iron-shod boots slipped on it. He tried to recover, failed and pitched over the side.
The other Whelm stopped, staring down at him. Sulien, twenty yards further on, did too. He had landed on his back on the tumbled stone and could not move. It looked as though he had broken his back, and that was a death sentence. She bent double, gasping for air, shocked at how quickly the life of a living, breathing person had been ended. It could have been hers.
She was still bone-weary from the days-long trek. Ahead was the stone arch, a hundred yards across and rising to a height of fifty feet. Could she cross it? She had to.
By the time she began the climb her calf muscles were burning and she was going slower and slower. The tireless Whelm were gaining; before she was halfway up, Yetchah had reached the bottom of the arch. She would catch Sulien before she scrambled down the other side.
Sulien staggered to the top of the arch. It was a yard and a half wide, but she was weaving from side to side, in danger of sliding off the edge. She was watching Yetchah’s head and shoulders coming up the slope when again Sulien had the shuddery feeling that something high in the air was watching her. No, stalking her.