by Ian Irvine
A clangour sounded down by the grottoes, a shrill, tearing sound that scraped her raw nerves. Dozens of other clangours answered it, then Cythonians were shouting, yelling and running. Had they discovered Lifka? Tali had to disappear.
She climbed the rubble pile, careful to make no noise. The hole was roughly triangular, though she wasn’t sure her small shoulders would fit. Tali put her head through into an oval passage where widely spaced luminous plates provided meagre pools of light. She put Poon down on a rock, hunched her shoulders, wriggled through with only a few scratches, then stuck at the hips.
If anyone went past the tunnel, they would see her waving legs and she would die. Tali put her hands flat against the wall and heaved, but did not budge. Wriggling backwards a couple of inches, she pulled her loincloth down over her hips and shoved. A sharp projection scored down her left hip then she toppled head-first into the passage.
She landed on her hands, recovered and looked back. Tinyhead was far too big to follow, though it would only gain her a minute or two. There would be other ways in.
Tali collected a quivering Poon, packed broken stone into the hole so it could not be seen from the main passage and was congratulating herself on her little victory when she realised that she could not reach Bet’s cell from here. Without Bet, Tali had no hope of magery, but she could not turn back.
She turned right, away from the guard post, passed a set of ticking box-fans driven by the flow of a siphon, walked a plank where a yellow pipe dribbled waste into a reeking effluxor sump and was trudging along when another clangour went off, above her head.
Tali was about to bolt when she realised that it wasn’t an alarm but the more melodious healer’s bell. Distantly, other bells repeated the signal and she heard a man’s voice, shouting frantically, and running feet, coming this way. And then the shredded scream of a woman in uttermost agony.
Tali’s hair stood up. Over the years she had seen many slaves injured by rock falls, accidents and cruel Cythonian punishments, but she had never heard such an awful cry. She slipped Poon into her pocket and backed away. The passage was broad here and there was nowhere to hide, though behind the effluxor sump she noted a recess in the left-hand wall. She squeezed into it and crouched in the shadows.
A vibration in her pocket was Poon nibbling at the poulter leg, but Tali didn’t begrudge her. The least she could do was to set her free with a full belly.
The screaming grew louder and shortly a group of hurrying figures appeared, all Cythonian: a tall man and a stocky one carrying someone on a stretcher, a bald man wearing a foreman’s sash and a thin, elderly fellow in the red gown of a master chymister. He was dreadfully scarred about the face, hands and arms, and carried a platina bucket. A heavy, green, slightly luminous fluid, dripping from the stretcher, smoked where it touched the stone floor. A drop fell on a clump of straw, which caught fire and burnt with a bright red flame.
From the other direction, a white-haired female healer, bearing the annular cheek tattoos of a master, came hurtling past Tali’s hiding place, robes flapping.
‘What happened?’ she panted. ‘Put her down.’
The bearers set the stretcher down in the light of a glowing fungi plate, thirty yards from Tali. The injured woman shrieked and writhed.
‘Hold her,’ yelled the healer, ‘or she’ll tear that leg right off.’
The bearers held the young woman down. The scarred chymister glanced at her leg and gagged. Tali rose to her feet, staring in awful fascination at the melon-sized hole in the woman’s thigh and the sickening brown fumes rising from it. Poon came creeping out of the pocket and poked her head above the waistband of the loincloth. Tali stroked her silky fur.
‘What took you so long?’ said the healer.
The foreman stared at the floor before him, wringing his meaty hands. ‘Took the miners all afternoon to dig ’er out.’
‘I don’t understand how this happened,’ the healer said furiously. ‘Alkoyl must be contained in capped platina ware at all times, yet it’s dripped all over her leg. Don’t you bother to follow the procedures?’
Tali had never heard the word alkoyl before, though everything done below was a secret.
‘We follow ’em to the letter.’ The foreman looked as though he wanted to sink through the floor. ‘Had urgent orders from the matriarchs, yesterday morning. All us foremen did — abluters, crystallisers, sublimaters, the lot! And down on the smything level, too.’
‘Matriarchs’ orders?’ the healer said sharply. ‘What orders?’
‘Get everything ready by month’s end, and no excuses.’
That’s only eleven days away, thought Tali. What are they up to?
‘Why wasn’t I informed?’ the healer said coldly.
‘I don’t know, Master Healer.’
‘Go on.’
The foreman glanced at the woman on the stretcher and his face crumpled. ‘We were workin’ double time. It had to be done at any cost.’
‘So you cut corners.’
‘Never! I check the alkoyl store every time we use it. You don’t muck around with that stuff. Twice I checked, last night. The dribblers were in and all the caps were double-tight.’
‘So what happened?’ said the healer, tapping one foot.
The white-faced foreman looked down at the victim. ‘She were up on the third elixerator, toppin’ up the alkoyl level, but someone had taken the dribbler out. The whole flask poured in.’ He groaned. ‘Blew the elixerator to pieces, and a whole flask of precious alkoyl lost — ’
‘And a woman dying in agony,’ the healer said caustically.
‘My little sister, Flix,’ said the foreman, burying his face in his hands and weeping so violently that his whole body heaved.
‘How could this happen? You must have made a mistake.’
The master chymister, shaking his head, drew the healer away from the others. ‘It’s not the first time a flask has been interfered with,’ he said quietly, ‘or a dribbler removed. Someone’s been stealing alkoyl for ages.’
‘But … that’s preposterous,’ said the healer. ‘No Pale is allowed down — ’
‘It’s not a Pale. It’s one of us, and we can never catch him.’
The healer goggled at him, then returned to the woman, who let out a chilling scream and fell silent. The healer, her face blanched, gingerly lifted away the severed, fuming leg and put it down against the wall. Poon squeaked and hid.
‘I’m sorry, Hyme,’ the healer said to the foreman, ‘there’s nothing anyone can do. Alkoyl is dissolving her flesh and bones, and it can’t be neutralised.’ She turned to the thin man dressed in red. ‘Master Chymister, you’d better fetch your stilling apparatus. You’ll want to recover as much as you can.’
‘Won’t be enough,’ he croaked, as if his throat was as scarred as his face. ‘And we can’t do without it. I’ll have to send down the Hellish Conduit for more, if I can get anyone to go.’ He shuddered. ‘After last time — ’
‘If no one else can take that path, you must do your duty,’ the healer said coldly.
‘I always do my duty. And look what it’s done to me.’
Once the chymister had headed back the way he had come, the healer gestured to the stretcher bearers. They picked up their burden and the grim cavalcade passed by Tali, out of sight. As it did, she smelled blood and seared flesh, and under that, very faint, an unnaturally sweet, oily odour with a hint of bitterness. A vaguely familiar odour. Where had she smelled it before?
She went towards the severed leg, which was still smoking against the wall. The green fluid had already eaten pits in the stone, each the depth of a knuckle, and the odour was strong enough to sting her nose from yards away.
Wil’s nose was eaten away on the inside. Could he be the thief? He had been sniffing something from a platina tube, she recalled. Tali backed away. Whatever it was, and whatever urgent chymical purpose the enemy needed it for, she wanted to know no more about it.
The incident had cost her
another twenty precious minutes. Tinyhead could not be far behind. Her options were closing off one by one and all she could do was run.
She lifted Poon out, kissed her head and set her down beside the effluxor. ‘Off you go, little Poon. You’ll be a lot safer on your own.’
Poon looked up at Tali reproachfully then, when she gently urged her away, took off towards the darkened hole in the wall. She was outside it when a ginger cat sprang from the rubble and pounced.
Poon squeaked once, then went limp. The cat carried her away, grinning.
As Tali fled, so shocked she was unable to weep, she could not but see the parallel with her own fragile existence.
CHAPTER 16
Tobry walked through solid rock and vanished.
‘Tobe?’ said Rix, unnerved.
‘Maybe the caitsthe’s hurt worse than we thought,’ Tobry said from inside.
‘More likely it’s putting on an act to lure us in.’
It wasn’t the caitsthe he was most afraid of, though. It was the illusion — or the wizardry behind it. Who had made it, and what was it protecting?
Tobry came out again. ‘And maybe it’s circled back to kill the horses and strand us here.’ He chuckled. ‘We’re a dismal pair, aren’t we?’
Rix grimaced. At times his friend’s relentless nihilism grew irksome, yet he could not have done without him. Damn it, he thought, I’m going through. Taking his sword in hand, he walked into the illusion.
It parted around the blade like a twinkling curtain and he found himself in a broad, lens-shaped cave that, oddly, was far colder than it had been outside. Even odder, he could see the vine thicket and the forest beyond — the illusion only worked one way. The floor had been swept so clean by the incessant wind that the single fist-sized stain was a bloody signpost pointing into the dark.
‘It crouched there for a moment.’ Tobry’s eyes were darting again.
To their left, water dripped from dagger-blade stalactites into a natural stone basin shaped like a kidney dish, encrusted with white and yellow concretions and full of clear water. Rix’s throat was dry as paper. He dipped a hand into the basin, the world tilted and turned upside-down, and his sight vanished in a tangle of whirling colours.
‘Rix?Rix?’
He groaned. Tobry was distorted and wild colours were streaming out of him.
‘What the hell happened?’ said Tobry.
‘Don’t know. Help me up.’
‘Stay down until you’re better.’
‘’S nothing. Just felt dizzy for a bit.’
Tobry gave a barking laugh. ‘You’ve been out for ten minutes.’
‘Can’t have …’ Rix tried to get up but his head was spinning and his hands did not know where the floor was. Again he felt as though part of his life had vanished.
Tobry heaved him to his feet. Rix clung to him, afraid of falling, shivering, shaking.
‘Joints feel funny — not sure knees will hold me up.’ The colours were fading, Tobry and the cave becoming clearer, the vertigo easing. ‘It’s getting better. Think I’m all right now.’
Tobry peered into his eyes. ‘Ever had a turn like that before?’
‘Never. I just put my hand in the basin.’ Rix let go and did not fall down, though he still felt wobbly.
Tobry studied Rix’s hand, which was unmarked, then extended a fingertip towards the water. His hand jerked downwards as if it was being pulled into the basin, and it took all his strength to hold it back. One fingertip touched the water and his head wobbled in a circle. He stumbled to the entrance and scrubbed his finger with a clump of moss.
Rix wiped his own hands and the sensations passed, apart from a trembling weakness of the knees and a worrying liquidity in his bowels. Just what I don’t need right now, he thought wryly.
‘Bad water,’ said Tobry, making a couple of passes over it with his right hand and murmuring words that raised goose pimples on Rix’s arms.
‘Enchanted?’
‘Not by any gramarye I understand. Lucky you didn’t wash your face in it.’
‘Lucky I didn’t drink it,’ said Rix. ‘I was going to.’ Death by magery — his personal nightmare. Well, one of those in the queue.
‘I’ll take some back, see if I can find out what it is.’ Tobry emptied out a glass potion phial and filled it with water from the basin, using a couple of twigs as tongs.
Rix could not see the back of the cave, though an air current suggested it ran for some distance. He swallowed painfully. ‘Let’s get on.’
‘You’re not up to it and neither am I.’
‘I told you — ’
‘I’m not going any further. This is a trap.’
The place bothered Rix too, but he could not turn back. ‘How could it be? No one knew we were coming.’
‘That damned sword of yours did.’
‘Now you’re being ridiculous.’
‘When you spun it that last time, I tried to turn it away,’ said Tobry. ‘I used my strongest magery on it but it kept spinning. It fought me, Rix. The sword was determined to bring us here.’
‘Whatever!’ Rix swallowed his unease. ‘Look, you know what shifters are like — after they heal themselves they have to feed. I’ve got to finish it … but you don’t have to come.’
‘I’m not.’
Deep in the cave, something went thunk. The water in the basin rippled and a rush of frigid air stirred Tobry’s hair.
‘What was that?’ Rix whispered.
‘Falling rock,’ Tobry said, too quickly.
Rix took a few steps towards the back of the cave. It was hard to move; the heavy air clung to his legs like molasses.
‘You’ll need light,’ Tobry added, too casually. He was fighting his fear of shifters, and what if he cracked? Every man had his breaking point.
Including Rix. Had he taken a mouthful of the uncanny water he would now be dead or insane. Had the caitsthe made it? They were intelligent creatures, the product of uncanny forces, and maybe they could do magery, too.
And if he had been lured, or led, here, why?
Tobry went out, hacked an oozing branch off the nearest resin pine, came back and lit the resinous end with flint and tinder. Rix reached for it.
‘I’ll carry it,’ said Tobry curtly.
‘You don’t have to come.’
‘Shut up!’
Once the flame grew to a yellow sputter Rix raised the torch in his left hand, took his sword in his right and headed into the dark. Ahead, the shadows writhed like a shapeshifter’s nightmare. The cave narrowed, then sloped down beyond sight, but at least it ran straight and smooth-walled, leaving nowhere for their quarry to lurk.
Unless it could shift into a less visible form …
Weather-worn images appeared on the walls, and as they descended the pictures became clearer and brighter, as if they had only recently been painted: peaceful scenes of forest and glade, seashore and mountain, fruits and flowers and beasts of the field.
‘Cythonians must have lived here long ago,’ Tobry said.
With the sword in his hand, Rix saw their art for what it was. ‘Sentimental, pretty rubbish. Why don’t they show the world as it really is?’
‘Nasty, violent and brutal?’
‘You can’t hide from reality.’
‘I’m doing my best.’ Tobry stopped. ‘Shh!’
Ahead, the passage turned sharply to the left. Rix edged around the corner. Ten yards further on, the floor was covered in debris fallen from the roof — a tumbled pile of iron-stained stone large enough to provide cover for a prone caitsthe.
He sniffed the air. ‘If it’s behind that, we’d smell it.’
Tobry licked a finger, not the one he’d dipped into the basin, and held it up. ‘The air’s moving down past us; it’d carry any scent away.’
‘And our smell to the shifter. Anyway, wherever it is, it’ll nose out the torch from a hundred yards away.’
‘Hold it higher.’
Rix went up on tiptoes and mov
ed left and right. ‘Don’t think it’s hiding there.’
‘If the beast attacks, we go for its weak point — the nuts.’
‘You go for its nuts.’ Rix touched the welt across his cheek.
Here, the passage was wide enough for them to walk abreast. The space behind the rubble was empty, though twenty paces further along the cavern branched into five passages, their walls being oddly blurred. Rix poked the torch into each in turn. Further on, they all split into more passages.
‘A maze.’ Rix stumbled. ‘Sorry, head’s spinning again.’ He could barely focus.
Tobry steadied him. ‘It’s enchanted to confuse anyone who gets this far.’
‘How come I feel it worse than you?’ Rix said dully.
‘Weaker mind,’ said Tobry with a thin smile.
‘Which way?’
Tobry got out a hand-sized piece of silver-streaked wood, carved into interlocking swirls that did not seem physically possible.
‘That thing makes me uneasy,’ said Rix.
‘Not thing, elbrot.’
‘I know what they’re called.’
‘It focuses my magery. And without magery, we may not get out of here.’
Tobry swept the elbrot back and forth before the five passages, studied it, sniffed the air, grunted and waved it towards the second on the left. For a second or two, the elbrot shimmered with emerald cold-fire.
Rix’s fingers clenched on the wound-wire hilt.
‘Something the matter?’ said Tobry.
‘What did the glow mean?’
‘A warning — don’t take that passage.’
‘So that’s the way we’re going.’
‘Need you ask?’
CHAPTER 17
At each new junction, Tobry took the way his elbrot warned against.
After some minutes they emerged from the maze to see two passages ahead, the left-hand path slowly descending, the right tunnel plunging down a steep set of stairs. Its walls and the steps themselves were glassy smooth, as if moulded from a molten state.