by Ian Irvine
Tobry indicated the left passage but, as he headed down, Rix could feel the trap closing. The caitsthe was probably lurking in the maze, and now it could pen them in. He whirled, nearly skewering Tobry with his sword tip.
‘With friends like you,’ Tobry said laconically.
And I was worried about Tobry cracking up, Rix thought.
The air grew ever colder and thicker. Now it was like wading through a pool of smashed ice. A drip froze on the tip of his nose.
‘How can it be so cold this far underground?’
‘You might ask, what’s making it so cold?’
Emerald green light was pulsing through the fabric of Tobry’s coat. He must be fingering the elbrot in his pocket. ‘Or you might just tell me,’ said Rix.
‘We won this land two thousand years ago, yet we know nothing about it.’
Shivers crept down Rix’s half-exposed chest and he wished he’d recovered his coat, torn though it was. ‘Are you saying this cold isn’t natural?’
‘How can it be? It should get warmer as we go deeper.’
The slope steepened. Ahead, seeps formed two lines of ice nipples along the roof, like the belly of a sow.
‘That stone looks none too solid,’ Tobry said from behind him.
Rix glanced up. Another shear zone, this one several yards wide, angled across the passage, and so much rock had fallen from it that a hollow ran up for several feet. He hunched his shoulders and moved on. Something grated underfoot; a broken human thigh bone.
‘Split to get at the marrow,’ Rix muttered. He blew on his fingers but could not warm them.
‘What’s that?’ Tobry whispered a few seconds later.
Rix stopped. ‘I didn’t hear anything.’
‘A faint mewling noise.’
The hairs rose on the back of Rix’s neck. ‘Like kittens?’
‘Very big kittens …’
‘I didn’t think caitsthes were able to breed.’
‘With the equipment our hairy friend has, I’m surprised it can think of anything else.’
Even the torch was struggling now, as if the darkness was pressing in on it, the cold dousing its fire. Rix sniffed. ‘Smells like cat piss. And it seems to be opening out further down. Can you see anything?’
‘Only in my inner eye.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘Can’t explain it. It’s just what I’m seeing.’
‘And that is?’
Tobry stopped and closed his eyes. ‘Below us, the tunnel coils down deep — very deep, like a spiral … no, two spirals, winding down together. Um … there are cross-passages linking the spirals … hollowed out into chambers …’ He caught at Rix’s shoulder, his breath rasping in and out.
‘What is it?’ Rix said hoarsely.
Tobry’s eyes flicked open, staring. ‘It’s enormous.’
‘Who could have made such a place?’
‘I don’t think we should go any further.’
‘I know damn well we shouldn’t, but we’ve come this far and I’m never coming back.’
Rix held the sword out before him. It felt heavier; he needed two hands to hold it steady and the hilt was so cold that his skin was sticking to it.
‘Rix, I really don’t like this place.’
‘Stay here. I’ve got to know what’s down there.’ He went forwards.
‘We’re trespassing, and when the owner catches us — ’
‘The spirals could have been empty for five thousand years.’
Tobry caught Rix by the left shoulder and jerked him back. ‘Stay here.’
Tobry pushed past, down into the darkness, his footsteps making odd, rustling echoes. Rix waited, fuming and afraid in equal measure. After some minutes, Tobry reappeared.
‘I don’t need to be protected, Tobe.’
‘Yes, you do.’
‘Well, what’s down there?’
‘Pens,’ said Tobry.
‘For animals? What kind?’
‘Couldn’t see. But I’d guess shifters …’
‘I’m getting a bad feeling — ’
From below them came another heavy thud, as if a stone door had been slammed, followed by a rush of air so cold that it crackled. Rix’s ears and the tip of his nose began to hurt; the next breath pricked his nostrils as if he’d breathed in a cloud of icy needles. He turned and thrust the torch forwards but the flames died until it gave out no more light than a match.
‘Back,’ Tobry croaked.
They hurried back. The flames kept low. At the passage with the steep, glassy-smooth steps, Rix stopped. Tobry caught his shoulder, as if to stop him again, then let go.
‘This time, I’m going down,’ said Rix. ‘Stay here.’
He sheathed his blade and went on, feeling his way down the precipitous stair, which had neither railing nor landings. Tobry followed.
‘Feels like ice,’ Rix whispered. ‘Like we’re in a flow tube melted through a glacier. We’re not though, are we?’
‘No.’ Tobry was panting.
‘Now would be a good time for your magery to work, Tobe.’
‘As I keep telling you, I don’t know enough — stop!’ Tobry’s fingers clamped Rix’s shoulder, hard enough to hurt.
Rix’s hair stirred. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘You’re about to walk off the end of the stair.’
It ended in mid-air three steps below them. The feeble torchlight reflected back from odd, alien curves a long way down, though he could not see enough to discern the shape they formed.
‘What’s down there, Tobe?’ he said softly. ‘Tobe?’
Tobry was waving the elbrot furiously but here it had no aura at all. ‘Weird,’ he muttered. ‘It’s shaped like some gigantic alchymical vessel.’
‘A what?’
‘An upside-down retort, and we’re above the top of the bulb.’
As Rix moved the torch, curved reflections shifted along arcs. ‘Can’t make any sense of it.’
‘It’s an impossibility,’ said Tobry in a low voice, ‘nothing can curve around and back through itself that way.’
As they peered down, Rix thought he could see spectral figures watching with dead eyes. His own eyes were watering from the cold, tears freezing as they formed.
‘Turn around,’ Tobry said in his ear. ‘We’re going up. Don’t make a sound. Don’t even breathe.’
For once, Rix was glad to do as he was told. His sword rattled in its sheath as if trying to get out. He clamped onto the hilt, sensed something moving below him and glanced over his shoulder.
From far below the spectral figures, a shadow was rising, so black that it stood out against the darkness.
‘Caitsthe?’ he whispered.
‘Too big,’ Tobry said hoarsely.
Too big? What could be bigger?
‘And it’s shooting up towards us.’
The steps below their feet undulated like water rippling in a basin. Rix’s knees wobbled. The air felt as though it had been charged up by a thunderstorm, and his hair was crackling.
Tobry swallowed audibly. ‘We’re getting out now.’ He pulled on Rix’s shoulder. ‘Pray to your Five Heroes.’
It was not in Rix to retreat from a fight. ‘You don’t believe in the Heroes.’
‘I’d pray to a pickled onion if it would get us home safely. Come on.’
‘What is that thing?’ Rix made out a pair of yellow pinpoints, racing upwards. Through the rents in his shirt, cold stabbed at his chest like icicle daggers.
‘We shouldn’t be here!’ Tobry yanked Rix’s arm. ‘Run, like you’ve never run before.’
Rix ran, glancing over his shoulder but the black shadow reflected nothing. Their hunter might have been man-shaped or it might have been winged. It was too large to be the caitsthe in cat form or human but, whatever it was, it was fast. There was a faint luminance about its middle, a reddish, uncanny glow, and shimmers of light further out. He could smell the magery on it, magery that gave him the blind horrors
.
They scrambled up the steep steps, through the pool of bitter cold, and were approaching the maze when Rix stumbled on a loose stone, twisted his right ankle and landed on his knees. Tobry, who was ahead, came running back and heaved him up. Wrenching the torch from Rix’s hand, he whirled it around his head until it flared, then hurled it at the onrushing shape.
Momentarily the figure was outlined in tinges of red — swirling robes, staff like a shepherd’s crook, a vaguely human shape that was glacier blue at the centre. It was like a wrythen from the nightmares Rix had been having lately, then the torch went out as if it had been swallowed whole.
‘The land is haunted,’ Rix gasped. ‘How are we going to survive?’
‘How are we going to survive?’ Tobry retorted.
He waved the elbrot furiously and it lit, telling him which path to take through the maze. Rix was glad of the enchantment now, for he could never have found the way. But then, he would not have seen the concealed cave in the first place.
‘It’s gaining,’ said Rix. ‘Can you hold it off?’
Tobry laughed hollowly. ‘Not even if I were Hightspall’s chief magian.’
They were approaching the rubble pile below the cave entrance, Rix limping badly, when a blast woven from a thousand shrieking souls howled up at the fissured roof ahead of them. It touched it with a pearly flicker, drifted forwards, and stone spalled away everywhere it touched. Crevices opened, fractures ground over rock fractures.
‘It’s trying to bring the roof down,’ gasped Tobry.
Rock began to fall, making a deadly curtain across the passage.
‘Don’t stop!’ Tobry dragged Rix on. ‘Dive through!’
‘We’ll never make it.’
‘Better we don’t than be trapped here with that.’
The wrythen hated them — Rix could see the rage shimmering all around the creature. It had never met them before, yet it loathed and despised them, wanted nothing but to crush them into oblivion. Why?
He ignored the pain and ran harder, preparing to leap the rubble pile and dive through the falling rocks. They might just make it.
Then something rose up from the other side of the rubble, its eyes reflecting the pearly light coming off the roof. Eyes that were higher than the top of Rix’s head.
The caitsthe was blocking the way out.
CHAPTER 18
What was alkoyl, and why had the master chymister shuddered at the thought of going down the Hellish Conduit, whatever that was, to get more? What were the enemy readying in such haste? And why?
Without warning, fingers thin and cold as knotted wire closed around Tali’s upper arms and she was jerked backwards into darkness. Tinyhead? No, her attacker was far too small. Biting her tongue to stifle a cry that was bound to bring guards running, Tali tried to pull free.
The fingers locked like manacles. ‘Stupid little scrag. Hold still.’ The woman’s voice was a croaky rasp, like the call of some aged bird.
‘Who are you?’ Tali whispered, struggling fruitlessly. There was something unnatural about the wiry fingers, which were draining the strength from her. ‘Are — are you taking me to Tinyhead?’
A bony fist cracked Tali on her sore ear. A series of lurching heaves took her backwards into a tunnel as black as her own terror. She was jerked around, thrust through a doorway and a latch clacked. The room was airless, confining and dank. She felt sure she was going to die here.
She swayed, so disoriented that she could hardly tell which way was up. ‘What are you going to do to me?’
‘Shut up.’
Tali gained the impression that her captor had an ear to the door. After a minute or two a brown, streaky glimmer appeared from that direction, and grew.
It revealed a tiny, birdlike Pale, a woman so ancient she was bald save for a few strands of white silk dangling from either side of a mottled skull with a jagged scar across the top. Her face was sharp as an axe, the eyes round like a bird’s eyes, the nose a parrot’s beak. Her shrunken lips appeared to have been sucked inside a toothless mouth and her fingers might have been lengths of wire knotted at the knuckles. As well as a grey loincloth, she wore a blouse made from frayed ragweed.
But Pale did not mean friend. The other slaves would either ignore her or betray her for the enemy’s favour. Tali assumed that this woman intended the latter.
The light, which sprang from her fingertip, was pure white where it shone on the wall, though transmitted through her broken nail it became a dingy brown.
The illuminated patch of wall was deeply sculpted to resemble a dripping forest in which every rock and fallen tree trunk was carpeted in bright green moss. Only the gritty stone beneath Tali’s feet told her that she was in a subterranean slave camp, not a primeval woodland.
‘Who — ?’ said Tali.
‘Shut it, you little turd!’
The eviscerated mouth had not moved. It sounded as though the words issued through the old woman’s gaping nostrils. Her head was tilted sideways like a crow studying an undersized worm and wondering if it was worth the effort.
Tali dragged her eyes back to the light, which was too bright to come from a chip of glowstone. Its source could only be magery, and no slave revealed that gift to a stranger — unless the old woman planned to kill Tali after getting what she wanted.
Tali tensed. Could she knock her aside and get away? But if she did, the old woman might sound the clangours.
‘Don’t try it,’ the old woman said.
‘Wasn’t going to,’ Tali lied.
‘My name is Mimoy,’ said the old woman, ‘and I’m dying.’
She didn’t look it. Though she was as aged and leathery as a mummy, her eyes were bright and her grip had been unbreakable. Perhaps that had been magery, too.
‘You are Thalalie vi Torgrist, of the noble House vi Torgrist,’ said Mimoy.
‘Yes,’ Tali said faintly.
‘You’re planning to break out of Cython,’ said Mimoy. ‘I require a service of you.’
Tali’s diaphragm spasmed, forcing the air from her lungs, and for several seconds she could not draw breath. How could Mimoy know her plans when she’d told nobody?
She focused on the second sentence. ‘A service’ could only mean blackmail — do what I say or I’ll betray you. Or was Mimoy a kwissler, here to lull Tali into admitting her plans? Planning to escape got you the Living Blade — after various tortures.
‘Don’t know what you’re talking about,’ she said hoarsely. A bead of sweat ran down her forehead into her left eye. She blinked it away.
The knotted-wire knuckles struck Tali’s ear where Orlyk had gashed her with the chuck-lash. Pain lanced through the lobe.
Mimoy dragged her forwards, pressing the forefinger nail of her unlit hand into Tali’s breastbone. ‘I’ve been watching over you all my life. I know everything about you.’
‘I’ve never seen you before,’ Tali said weakly.
Mimoy’s smile was as ragged as her nail. ‘Your mother tried to teach you your gift. She failed.’
The sweat bursting from Tali’s brow turned icy. Mimoy knew too much, and they were both going to die for it. ‘Wizardry is evil,’ Tali said, parrot fashion. ‘It’s forbidden to all save the lost kings of Cython.’
‘Iusia vi Torgrist failed,’ said Mimoy, prodding Tali to emphasise each word, ‘because your gift is not the feeble heritage magery of House vi Torgrist.’
‘Don’t say that word,’ Tali cried. How could the old woman talk so casually about the forbidden? ‘I have no gift.’
Mimoy indented a series of crescents down Tali’s breastbone. ‘When you were three, a slave boy was beaten in front of you and you were so furious that you made a geyser burst from the wall. It washed the guard a hundred yards down the tunnel and broke both his legs.’
Shivers crept up Tali’s bare arms. Could it be true? She vaguely remembered a flood, then her mother shrieking and carrying her away …
‘You next used magery when you were eight —
’
‘No,’ Tali moaned, shaking her head furiously. ‘I know nothing about it.’
‘Three days after your mother’s murder the man called Tinyhead, whose real name is Sconts, was discovered crawling along a distant tunnel, bleeding from the mouth, nose, eyes and ears. He claimed to have been attacked by a horde of slaves, yet there was not a mark on him.’
‘It wasn’t me.’
‘You struck him down with a spell of your own devising. You nearly killed him.’
‘It’s not true,’ Tali whispered.
She had suppressed most of the memories of the worst day of her life, though she could remember the rage. She had directed it at the big man who had betrayed her mother, willing his tiny head to explode. Had she really done that to Tinyhead, through a stone door? The grotesquely bulging skull and ruined face, still engorged with blood ten years later, was evidence that she had.
‘Yet your gift mostly fails you. It let you down yesterday when you tried to save your only friend. That’s why you forced a girr-grub down Lifka’s throat and stole her uniform.’ Mimoy’s white-filmed eyes were on the red-brown loincloth.
‘How do you know all that?’ Tali whispered. Ah, the small, hobbling shadow she had seen earlier. ‘You’ve been following me.’
‘Watched over you ever since your mother was killed,’ said Mimoy. ‘And over her mother before that. Failed and failed!’
‘Why? Who are you?’ Perhaps Mimoy didn’t intend to betray her after all. Tali restrained the surging hope. First, she had to know the price.
‘Your mother died because she was weak,’ Mimoy spat.
‘How dare you?’ Tali cried, restraining an urge to slap the old woman.
‘Also your grandmother, and your great-grandmother and great-great-grandmother. All murdered; all weak! Are you going to let the enemy kill you too?’
‘No!’ Tali snapped. ‘I’m strong.’
‘The first time I saw your quality was when you attacked Lifka,’ said Mimoy. ‘The same ruthless quality that’s made me the oldest Pale in Cython. One hundred and nineteen yesterday.’
‘A hundred and nineteen?’ Tali echoed. In Cython, anyone who lived to fifty was regarded as old. ‘No one lives to that age.’