by Ian Irvine
‘Axil Grandys did.’
‘Damn you, Tobe!’ Rix stalked away. ‘I’ve got to get home.’
‘The other blasts were much closer to home,’ said Tobry. ‘All Caulderon will know by now. Go if you must, but I’m staying. We can learn a lot about the enemy by the way they’ve attacked.’
Tobry was right. If they could decipher the enemy’s tactics it would be vital intelligence. ‘Why haven’t they put in a garrison?’ said Rix.
‘Maybe they don’t want to hold Gullihoe.’
Tobry continued down the street, using magery to reconstruct the attack. Ahead, a stocky young man lay on his back, milky eyes staring upwards. His clothes were charred on the left-hand side and his face was as red as sunburn, though there was no mark of injury on him.
‘Dead?’ said Rix.
Tobry nodded.
There were more bodies, though far less than the number Rix would have expected for a town as big as Gullihoe. No one called out to them, though they heard groaning coming from beneath rubble they could not have shifted without ropes and winches. The rest of the survivors had fled.
Ahead, a young woman also lay dead with sunburnt face and milky eyes. Her body was twisted, as though she had been writhing before she died, her fingernails broken where she had clawed at the ground.
Rix straightened her out, pulled her gown down and closed her staring eyes. A slash-shaped burn mark across her belly was deeply charred as if a length of red-hot metal had struck her.
Rix shivered. ‘Magery?’
Tobry waved his elbrot above the mark. Rix saw a linear flash and a shadow figure clutching at her belly. He shook his head. ‘Not an iota.’ He stood upright, looking grey and weary and twice his age. ‘But there’s something dark at work here.’
‘Tali had a welt on her shoulder,’ said Rix. ‘Nothing as bad as that, but the shape was the same.’
Tobry sniffed the charred wound. ‘Smells like an alchymical device.’
The hair rose on Rix’s scalp. ‘What kind of war is this, where they can do such destruction and we don’t know how?’
‘Magery isn’t telling me as much as I’d hoped. All the more reason to find Tali, who knows the enemy.’ He looked at Rix questioningly.
‘I’ve seen enough,’ said Rix. ‘If we’re going to find her, let’s go.’
They mounted and headed back, as fast as it was safe to ride in the dark.
‘Who are the Cythonians, anyway?’ said Tobry an hour later. They were riding down a country road and there was just enough light to see stubbled fields to either side. To their right, a series of small hills made dark mounds against the sky.
‘We know who they are,’ Rix said irritably.
‘We know who they were when they were called Cythians. We haven’t seen them in fifteen hundred years.’
‘What rot! Our traders deal with them at the Merchantery. We buy the damned heatstones off them.’
‘We don’t trade with them. Our traders deal with the Vicini outlanders, and they trade with Cython. I’ve never heard of anyone setting eyes on a Cythonian until we came on those unconscious ones at the Rat Hole.’
‘How did they come to go underground, anyway?’
Tobry gave him a sardonic glance. ‘Regretting the history books you didn’t read?’
‘I’m starting to see the use of them. But, Tobe, after they lost the war the Cythians were nothing but filthy degradoes, living in muck and killing each other. They were thought to have died out, then they reappeared as a force living underground where we couldn’t touch them — as the Cythonians. What happened?’
‘That’s a good question.’
‘Do you have a good answer?’
‘No one does … though I’ve heard that an early chancellor — just before they disappeared — tried to wipe them out in secret.’
Worms wriggled up Rix’s spine. ‘I haven’t heard that.’
‘It’s not in the history books, nor taught by the tutors. One night, according to the tale, bands of nameless mercenaries surrounded the degradoes’ three camps, locked the gates and set the camps ablaze. Then archers shot everyone trying to escape.’
‘The writer must have meant their army camps.’ Rix could justify the torching of an enemy army camp in wartime, though he would not have locked the gates.
‘They had no army, Rix. The degradoes hadn’t been allowed weapons since their defeat, two hundred years before. The camps were miserable shanty towns, even more squalid than the ones surrounding Caulderon, and they burnt like kindling.’
Rix shifted uneasily in the saddle. ‘How do you know the chancellor was behind it?’
His artist’s eye, sometimes a blessing but lately a curse, showed him every terrible detail clearly enough to paint it. He could hear the screams, see the flesh charring and smell the burnt bodies as though he was there.
‘Some of the mercenaries were so sickened by their part in genocide that they revealed the name of their paymaster.’
‘If the enemy were wiped out, how did Cython come about?’
‘No one knows. For two hundred years they were thought extinct, then suddenly it revealed itself — a new civilisation with defences we could never break — ’
‘Taunting us by their very presence,’ said Rix, half-heartedly, still seeing the burning camps.
‘The degradoes were a ruined people, raddled by pox and drink and sniffily,’ said Tobry. ‘So how did a handful of them — for any who did escape could have been no more than a handful — set up such a powerful civilisation, so quickly?’
Rix said nothing.
‘That may turn out to be the most vital question of all,’ said Tobry.
CHAPTER 40
‘I killed Overseer Banj with magery and I can do you too,’ Tali blustered. If she did not resist they would crush her like a slave, yet she knew she would pay for her defiance.
The guards formed a line with her in the middle and Tinyhead ahead of her, and roped themselves together. Orlyk waddled down the line, inspected Tali’s bonds then brought a meaty knee up into her belly.
Tali hit the baked earth, the stars going in and out of focus. A guard unshuttered his lantern and the bluish light of a glowstone shone into her eyes.
‘We can drag you all the miles back to the shaft,’ said Orlyk, ‘grinding your face off against the ground. I’d enjoy that.’
Tali’s back felt as though she was still carrying the sunstone. She tried to get up but there was no strength in her legs. The guards heaved her upright and jerked on the rope. She stumbled on, the bindings already chafing her wrists and despair whispering in her ear. Rannilt would not find help. Lost in the Seethings on a dark night, the terrified child would be lucky to survive. It’s waitin’ in the dark, she had said. Waitin’, waitin’.
Tali’s last hope, in Tobry, was fading by the minute. Rix must have refused him. She could only rely on herself. Well, she had been in hopeless situations before and succeeded. She would find a way.
‘I met two Hightspallers back at the oasis,’ said Tali, testing her bonds. They did not budge. ‘Powerful men riding fast horses. They’ll come howling out of the darkness and cut you down.’
‘Hightspall despises the Pale. They won’t come,’ sneered Orlyk.
Tali flexed her wrists until the skin tore, trying to stretch the bonds enough to slip a hand free. The rope did not give. ‘How do you know that?’
‘We feed stories to the heatstone merchants.’
‘What stories?’
‘About how lovingly the Pale serve us. Your people lap up every word.’
‘But Tobry liked me,’ said Tali plaintively, then cursed her lack of self-control.
Glee lit Orlyk’s dark eyes. ‘Once they see that, they won’t even remember your name.’
In the distance a cloud, tinted with crimson fire, gushed up. Another appeared far to the left, in the direction of Caulderon, while a third mushroomed on the right. Tali bit down on a cry. The war had begun.
‘We
have tactics to defeat every weapon Hightspall possesses,’ said Orlyk. ‘Caulderon will fall within a week, and we’ll show the survivors the same mercy they showed us in the first war.’
The enemy must have advanced their plans because of Tali’s escape, and the attack had come before Tobry could have sent warning. Could Caulderon fall that easily? She did not want to believe it … but the enemy had terrible new weapons.
Tali scanned the darkness and saw only ill omens: behind her, the eerie clouds rising ever higher; ahead, red flickering above the crater of the Brown Vomit. It was erupting again. From somewhere close by, steam whistled up through a crack. The Seethings was a boiling pressure-kettle and they were walking across the top.
The trudge resumed. The small hole through Tinyhead’s skull had scabbed over. How could he still be alive? Yet alive he was, and in pain. She thought he was suffering more than she was.
‘Mathter,’ he groaned. ‘Mathter, help me.’
Tali felt an aching pressure in her skull, as if something was attempting to prise open the shell with which she had blocked the call. She tightened her mental grip and after a minute or two the pressure died away.
The trek continued, one stumbling, exhausting hour after another. Tinyhead made a gurgling sound in his throat and extended his arms towards the unseen mountains beyond the Vomits.
‘Mathter,’ he wailed, ‘help me.’
Orlyk came stalking back, swinging a chuck-lash in one meaty hand. ‘Enough!’ She snapped it against his chest, hard enough to sting though not hard enough to set it off, and returned to the front.
Was Tinyhead in anguish because he had failed his master? She thought so. Could she make use of that devotion? Tali choked back hysterical laughter. He had betrayed her mother, and she loathed him more than anyone save her killers. Yet back at the Rat Hole he had revealed an unexpected nobility — he did nothing for his own gain, only for love of his master.
‘Mathter? Help me do your will, Mathter.’
Orlyk stalked down and struck him across the mouth with the chuck-lash, crack-crack-crack. Tinyhead lurched around, spitting out blood and broken teeth. A blistered welt ran from ear to ear and his gory mouth was stretched in agony. His eyes wept red tears but he made no sound.
How could he hold back such pain? Tali would have screamed loudly enough to bring up her oesophagus. Here is a man! she marvelled. How I’ve underestimated him. She would always hate Tinyhead for what he had done, yet she could also admire his unswerving dedication. And his master did not want her taken back to Cython and executed …
Using him was a faint hope, almost non-existent, but better than nothing.
‘Tinyhead?’ she said softly, praying that the crackling of salt crystals underfoot would mask her voice.
His nodular head creaked around as though his joints were choked with sand. His ruined mouth moved silently.
‘There’s only one way you can serve your master now,’ said Tali.
The inflamed eyes bulged. His throat quivered, his tongue squelched around in his wet mouth.
‘Betrayer, away …’ he said under his breath.
‘You have to take me to the cellar.’
The thought of returning to that place made her tremble, yet, whether the murder cellar was her doom, or a step on the road of her quest, she had to go there.
‘Can’t betray … own people,’ said Tinyhead.
She leaned forwards. If any of the guards realised what she was up to, Orlyk’s next chuck-lash would take half her face off. ‘You betrayed them when you led my mother there.’
‘Different now. War!’
‘If Orlyk takes me back I’ll be killed … and the thing your master wants will be lost.’ It was a guess, but there was evidence for it. ‘Cleave to your people and you betray your master. You have to choose.’
‘Can’t.’
‘You must.’
‘Can’t do anything. Blocked.’
‘Who blocks you?’ Tali repeated, more loudly than she had intended.
From five yards away, Orlyk hurled a chuck-lash across Tali’s belly. She did not hear it explode, for the linear flare of pain, like a burning blade cutting her in half, overwhelmed all her senses. She doubled over, wanting to scream then wanting to vomit, jamming her knuckles into her mouth to prevent herself from doing either. Not for anything would she give Orlyk the satisfaction: not even if it killed her.
Tali straightened, her midriff a shriek of pain, expecting to see a mortal gash across her belly and entrails spilling out, but there was only a red welt an inch across and a foot and a half long. Her robes were burnt through, though, and the beautiful gown was ruined. That hurt more than her own pain.
With a grunt of satisfaction, Orlyk urged the group to greater speed. Tali wiped her flooding eyes. Tinyhead was staring at her, and she thought she saw compassion in his eyes, though they were swiftly hooded. No, she must have imagined it.
A panacea occurred to her, though she could not waste it on herself. ‘I have something that can numb your pain,’ she murmured.
‘Don’t speak to me.’
‘It might unblock you so you can do what your master requires.’
It was a guess, though who else could have blocked such a powerful man?
‘What is it?’ said Tinyhead.
‘Purple Pixie.’ A last, shrivelled toadstool lay in the bottom of her pocket, so desiccated that the Cythonians had not noticed it when searching her. Could the hallucinations it brought release the block?
‘I’ll have it,’ said Tinyhead.
‘Stop for a second.’
He stopped, grimacing and rubbing his thigh, and the lead rope slackened enough for her to fish the Purple Pixie out and palm it. Orlyk brandished another chuck-lash at him. He faced her stolidly. She glanced at the rising columns of crimson-tinged smoke, and the angle of the stars, and her mouth turned down. She was afraid.
‘The enemy will have a hundred patrols out by now,’ said Orlyk. ‘Faster!’
They continued, limping across rippled salt crusted so hard that every footstep jarred. To the left, mist rose from a suspiciously smooth expanse; on the right, a long, narrow pool was so clear that Tali could see the shining shapes of crystals on the bottom, reflecting the starlight. She judged that they would reach the edge of the Seethings in another hour, after which they had at least an hour’s climb to reach the Rat Hole. Once there, she had no hope. It had to be now.
Tinyhead reached back with a hand that could have enveloped her skull and she pressed the Purple Pixie into it. As he raised the hand to his face, she saw that his coordination was improving. Another marvel — he was beginning to recover.
The toadstool would take a few minutes to take effect but, even if it unblocked him, what could he do against twenty? If he tried to escape, Orlyk would cut him down.
This part of the Seethings belied its name. The night was silent. No hoof beats, no Tobry. All she could hear was the crunch of boots on salt and a distant gloop-gloop of bubbling mud.
The big man lurched sideways, and in the same instant Tali heard that distant call in her head, her enemy, searching for her. Did he know Tinyhead was recovering? Her mental shell was gaping. She forced it to close, cutting the call off.
Tinyhead groaned, ‘Master?’
Something bright flashed in arcs through the lantern light, before him and behind, and Tali’s lead rope slackened. He had cut it. Before she could run he elbowed her out of the line, wound one rope around each wrist and heaved with all his strength, ducking aside so the fore and after guards cannoned into each other. Glowstone lanterns tumbled through the air and went out, save for one whose slanting rays lit up a strip of the unnaturally smooth ground to the right.
‘What happened?’ yelled Orlyk. The heaped Cythonians were all shouting, yelling and trying to untangle themselves.
Tinyhead snapped the bows of the three archers over his knee, swept Tali up in one arm and ran over the piled guards. He stepped with a crunch onto Orlyk’s bro
ad nose, twisted, and bolted onto the smooth expanse.
‘Go back!’ Tali cried. ‘You’ll fall through.’
The surface rocked, quaking under his massive feet like an ice floe on a pond. But it was not ice; she could feel the heat radiating up from underneath. He was running across the baked crust on a pool of scalding mud, and if it broke, as it surely must under Tinyhead’s weight, they would be cooked alive.
CHAPTER 41
‘Ged avter dem!’ howled Orlyk, blood belching from her mashed nose.
Lanterns were righted and their beams directed towards Tinyhead. Tali looked back as a lanky, big-footed fellow stepped onto the crusted mud. White circles ringed his eyes — he was sure he was going to die. But the crust did not crack. Feet that size would spread the load — a smaller load than Tinyhead plus Tali. He moved forwards, gingerly.
‘All ob you!’ screeched Orlyk. ‘Ib dey ged away, ve faze Libbing Blade.’
The rest of the guards moved onto the crust, then Orlyk hurled a black and yellow length at Tinyhead. Tali, helpless in his grip as he fleeted across the quaking surface, watched the death-lash spinning towards them. It could take off a limb in one flaring excruciation.
‘Left!’ she yelled in Tinyhead’s quivering ear.
He sprang two yards to the left, landing with a thump that shook the surface, and one foot broke through three inches of crust into steaming mud. He was heaving his foot out when the whirling death-lash struck the point he had sprang from and went off in yellow and black fire, blasting jagged chunks of crust and gouts of boiling mud everywhere.
Tali shrank into the shelter of Tinyhead’s torso. He was struck on the face and arms by chunks of crust and clots of boiling mud, though he showed no pain. The toadstool must still be numbing him. From the point of the blast the crust fractured like ice, one crack snaking towards Tinyhead, a bigger, broader crack zipping the way they had come.
‘Nod dogedder,’ yelled Orlyk, for the guards were moving in a mass. ‘Zpread out, zpread out!’