by Ian Irvine
A line of cracks was sweeping towards Tinyhead, the crust breaking into angular pieces which would not have supported a child’s weight. He leapt sideways onto solid crust, though as he landed it cracked again.
‘Slide on it,’ said Tali in her Lady vi Torgrist voice. ‘Three inches of crust might take our weight if there’s no impact.’
Tinyhead knew when to obey. He slid his right foot forward one stride, took his weight on it with a creaking that cracked the crust around him but did not break through, then slid the other foot up and past it.
As the broad crack from the death-lash zigged and zagged in the direction of the guards, they scattered in all directions, two scrambling back towards the shore, the others sweeping out to Tinyhead’s right and left, then ahead, moving as fast as they could to cut him off.
They were twenty yards ahead now and coming together to form a line. Tinyhead was hesitating when the woman on the left-hand end of the line screamed, dropped her lantern and flung out her arms. The crust was cracking around her, for she was big and solid, and her small feet concentrated the load.
Had she kept moving she might have made it, but she froze as the overloaded crust cracked on all sides, leaving her on a mud floe only a yard across. It tilted, she threw her weight the other way and the floe split, dumping her into the mire. Steam gushed out as she slid down to chest level, floating in hot quick-mud with the consistency of glue. She struggled furiously but there was no solid ground below her, and nothing to take a grip on.
‘Help me,’ she said shrilly, but the other Cythonians dared not move her way.
Tinyhead slid a yard towards her, then another. Tali could hear each breath rasping into his lungs.
The woman threw out her hands towards him. ‘It’s burning, it’s burning!’
They were only yards away now. Her face was scarlet; she was in such agony that no human being could have passed her by … yet if Tinyhead tried to save her, he would surely fall through.
Tali checked on the other guards. They were moving carefully around the cracked area, closing the gap.
‘You can’t save her,’ Tali said. It was cruel, but nothing could be done.
Taking a firm grip on her, Tinyhead slid forwards another yard and stretched out his free arm. The woman caught his fingers, clinging desperately, and he slowly drew back, straining to lift her from the sucking mud without cracking the surface beneath him. Her chest came free, her waist. The exposed skin was raw, blistered, weeping.
Then she stuck at the hips. She gasped, ‘Pull harder,’ and began to flail about.
‘Don’t move,’ said Tinyhead, swinging her arm gently to try and break the suction.
‘It’s burning. Get me out!’ she howled.
Overcome by panic, she thrashed wildly, lost her grip and slid down into the hot mud again, and the crust cracked to pieces. Nothing could save her now.
Tali watched in helpless horror as Tinyhead carried her away, and she had to cover her ears to block out the screaming. The woman’s thrashing widened the cracks and one zipped towards the line of guards, who backpedalled hastily.
A burly fellow wearing red tasselled boots made a desperate bid for the edge of the pond and almost made it, moving so fleetly that he was off each breaking chunk of crust before it could collapse under him. But, only a few yards from safety, he made the mistake of lunging, trying to reach the edge in a single leap.
It was too much for the fragile crust. His feet broke through, he made a desperate tumbling drive for the edge but fell short and went in head-first. There was no scream, for he had plunged down to the waist. One beating arm broke the surface, his legs kicked furiously for half a minute, then flopped, lifeless, as his overheated brain expired.
Tinyhead, still sliding forwards and barely outrunning the spreading cracks, looked over his shoulder. The trapped woman was still now, her face the colour of a boiled lobster. Three more guards had also gone in and their desperate efforts to escape only sank them deeper. The heat would kill them in minutes, and then they would slowly cook.
‘Master,’ whispered Tinyhead, shaking his head from side to side as he slid on. What must it have cost him to put his master’s needs ahead of the lives of his own people? ‘Master, I will never fail you … but the price … the price is very high.’
Tali thought so too. Five more guards dead because she had dared to escape where no one else ever had. Where would it end? Her toes curled at the thought of such a death.
Orlyk, whose face and chest were drenched in blood, tossed another two death-lashes high and hard, trying to break through the crust and plunge Tinyhead in. One landed short, the other went over his head, but Tinyhead was adept at this game now. He found a smooth path to the left and soon they were out of range.
His foot struck a rough patch that was no longer crust, he stepped up onto indurated ground and all was solid underneath him. They were safe. By the time Orlyk’s remaining troops reached this point, he would have disappeared into the maze of the Seethings.
Safe, ha! Tali thought with a bitter smile — if she could not free herself, she’d merely have swapped one unpleasant death for another. And even if she did escape, how far would she get with bound hands when Hightspall was at war and the enemy were swarming everywhere?
So the night proceeded, one step, then another and another. Tinyhead must have been exhausted but his grip on her never relaxed. Their passage through the Seethings was punctuated by his tormented cries to his master. She tried to ignore them. Could she extract the name his master had blocked last time?
‘Who killed my mother?’ she said quietly.
He did not reply. In the darkness to their left, a geyser spurted, the water having a violet luminescence. It went up so far into the frigid night that the spray falling on them was icy.
Tali worked her chafed wrists back and forth, attempting to free her hands, but the ropes had been tied too cunningly. ‘Who’s your master, Tinyhead?’
He stopped. The ruined mouth stretched wide, though no one would have called it a smile, and he opened his free hand. On his palm lay the shrivelled Purple Pixie, complete but for the tip of its pointed hood.
‘Only ate enough to unblock. Not enough to lose control.’ He tossed it away.
He was recovering rapidly, physically and mentally, and would soon be back to the strength he’d had when she first met him. If she was to escape, she had better try soon.
Tali gave an experimental wriggle. His arm clamped so tightly around her chest that she could not draw a full breath.
‘Know what you’re about,’ said Tinyhead. ‘On guard.’
He began to trot, weaving between a myriad of pools and mires, quick-mud seethes and holes that, despite the phosphorescent water in them, appeared to have no bottom. Tali looked back and could no longer see the glowstone lanterns. It would take a miracle for Orlyk to catch them in this dark and deadly labyrinth.
Little consolation to her. She contemplated the possibility that Tinyhead would get her to the murder cellar after all. Caulderon could not be more than seven miles from here. Once out of the Seethings he could reach the city before dawn, even in the dark, and get inside, too. Tinyhead was a driven man. He would find a way.
An hour went by, and another, and Tali was counting down the miles. They must be close to the north-eastern edge of the Seethings. The ponds, mires and sunken lands were further apart now and she had not seen a geyser in ages. How far to Caulderon? Five miles? Four? She could see lights in the distance, probably the thickly clustered villages of Suthly County on the other side of the main road. Not long at all.
The land was lumpy here, covered in nodules and round mounds. She could hear bubbling to left and right, and a slow, oily gurgling issued up through crusted cracks. The air had the acrid smell of sulphur.
She rubbed the painful weal across her belly. Unarmed and exhausted as she was, what could she do to save herself? Tinyhead would avoid all forms of habitation, but in the densely populated land ahead a chance meeting was lik
ely. She had to be ready to call for help.
He stopped abruptly. More lights appeared, brighter than before, revealing that the ground, the lumps and the nodules were solid yellow sulphur. But the lights were both ahead and to either side now. They weren’t village lights, they were glowstone lanterns, though not Orlyk’s.
‘She the one,’ came a familiar voice from the darkness, an awed, enraptured voice. ‘Found her. She the one.’
Wil the Sump was at the head of a second squad of Cythonians and he had led them straight to her.
CHAPTER 42
Tinyhead let out another of those shivery groans. ‘Master? I can’t turn on my own people. Not again.’
His master, if he had heard, gave no answer.
‘Put the slave down, Sconts, and get out of the way,’ said a voice from the darkness. A deep voice, confident in its authority.
Tinyhead tightened his grip around Tali’s chest. The white-coated tongue licked his ruined lips as he looked for a way of escape, but the lights blocked three sides now and distantly, on the fourth, Tali saw more glowstone lanterns. Orlyk was coming.
Tinyhead’s eyes fixed on a gap in the lights ahead. His muscles tensed and his bulging head swung from side to side as he assessed his chances. Tali’s right ear was squashed against his chest and she could hear the breath crackling in his lungs. Was he going to run?
‘She has to die,’ said the deep voice, and an annular blade shone as it was raised above the speaker’s head — a Living Blade. ‘Here and now.’
‘Wil saved her,’ moaned Wil. ‘She Wil’s now.’
‘She may not die at your hands,’ said Tinyhead, and bolted towards the gap.
Down a gentle slope he pounded, through a patch of shadow and straight into a concealed pit of mud, the reason for the gap. But there was no crust here and he let out a gasp as his feet sank deep. For a second she thought he was going to be trapped the way Orlyk’s troops had been, but his feet found the base of the shallow pit, his thighs bunched and drove him through the hot, knee-deep mud.
Steam gushed up from each footfall and pungent gases stung Tali’s nostrils, but Tinyhead was an automaton no wound or pain could stop. He reached solid ground, his mud-coated feet slipping and skidding as he climbed a gentle slope, and drove for the gap between the guards. He almost made it.
The man to the left hurled his sword, hilt forwards, its flat end striking Tinyhead above the ear. He let out an explosive grunt, dropped Tali and began to stagger around blindly. The blow had driven him back into the zombie state he’d been in after the hole had burnt through his head.
Tali landed on her shoulder, the impact numbing her whole arm, and was struggling to her feet when the guard dived on her, flattening her on the yellow ground. He put his knees in the middle of her back and held her down with all his weight. Two more guards stood to either side, their blades out-thrust, and the others ran in and held Tinyhead at bay. It was over.
He shook his head, then reeled off into the darkness, wailing, ‘Master, I failed you.’
The man giving the orders said, ‘Take a firm grip on the slave. Should she escape again, our families will suffer the fate set down for her.’
The guard took his weight off Tali, keeping hold of her arms. The captain was a strong, handsome fellow with a clear brown eye and a confident manner. Then he turned, and the other side of his face was a ruin of raised white scars and deep pock marks. The survivors of that explosion on the lower levels of Cython a few years ago had looked like this.
‘Raise her and hold her,’ he said.
He examined Tali’s face and slave mark, nodded and issued orders in a low voice. Ten guards formed a line to block Tinyhead in case he attacked from the darkness.
A thin, owl-eyed woman was studying the bobbing lanterns through a pair of night glasses. ‘Captain, it’s Orlyk’s squad. They’ll want to take her back to Cython.’
‘Orlyk has allowed the Pale to escape twice,’ said the captain. ‘We have our orders and we’re not giving her up.’
‘Said you wouldn’t hurt her,’ cried Wil the Sump, waving his skinny arms.
‘Nor will I,’ said the captain, rubbing his cheek with a callused thumb. ‘She won’t even feel it as I take her head off.’
This was it. She was going to die. Even if Rix and Tobry were to ride up with an army of a thousand, the captain would behead her before they could get close.
Tali shook off the despair. Never give up. Think, think!
Wil tried to pull the captain away from Tali. ‘But she the one.’
‘And the one has to die, Wil. The Living Blade gives a merciful death. It’s more than she deserves, considering her crimes.’
Could she work on Wil the way she had swayed Tinyhead? It was the faintest hope, because any of the guards would be his match in strength, and they were all around, all armed, all watchful.
Whatever Wil had seen in her, it mattered deeply to him. Could she manipulate him to create a chance of escape? How far would he go to protect her?
‘You’re right, Wil,’ said Tali. ‘I am the one and you’ve got to help me.’
‘See!’ cried Wil, and stretched out his thin arms imploringly. His gruesomely enlarged nostril was dripping blood, his hands and wrists were so scarred and cracked that fluid was weeping through the skin, and there was an odd, oval bulge across his belly. ‘Mustn’t touch her. You’ll ruin the ending.’
As he surged forwards, Tali caught the oily, oppressively sweet odour of alkoyl. Where did a nobody like Wil get such precious stuff? Could he be the thief that the master chymister had mentioned — the one whose clumsy theft had caused the explosion on the lower levels and burnt through that young woman’s leg?
‘Don’t be silly, Wil.’ The captain held him off with one hand, gently and respectfully. Wil might be mad, but when he went into shillilar the matriarchs listened. ‘The matriarchs have decreed that the one has to die, to protect our future.’
Tears began to drip from Wil’s empty eye sockets. ‘Must not interfere with shillilar. She vital to Cython’s story.’
‘The matriarchs look after the future, Wil. You clean out sumps.’
‘Tali special,’ wailed Wil.
‘The matriarchs have given their orders,’ said the captain, ‘and they will be carried out.’
Wil stiffened, then went rigid save for his fingers, which hooked into talons and raked at the air. ‘ Wil sees her,’ he uttered in an ecstatic voice. ‘She whispers to Khirrik-ai. She — ’
The captain jerked his head at the nearest guard, who took Wil around the chest with one brawny arm and stopped his mouth with the other hand.
The captain shook his head. ‘Sorry, Wil. The matriarchs said you might pretend to have a shillilar.’
‘Not pretend, not pretend.’
‘Take him away, Borst,’ the captain said to a stocky fellow with a shock of sulphur-yellow hair. ‘Treat him kindly; don’t let him see.’
Wil was led away, struggling feebly.
‘Wil, help me,’ whispered Tali.
But they did not allow him to look back and, though she knew Tinyhead still lurked in the darkness beyond the lantern light, neither could he break through the captain’s cordon. Tali had nothing left. She hoped she could face her end the way a lady of House vi Torgrist should, with dignity.
Two guards stood her on her feet, holding her so tightly that she could not move. Both men were leaning backwards, making room for the captain’s swing. Tali pictured the Living Blade taking Mia’s head off her slender neck. She had sworn a blood oath to Mia, and she had failed, failed at everything.
The captain studied Tali and his eyes softened. ‘So brave, so clever. What I have to do is indeed a waste.’
‘Then don’t do it,’ Tali burst out. ‘Take me back. I promise — ’
‘My orders are to bring your head home to Cython, as proof that the one is dead and the shillilar has been averted.’
As he raised his Living Blade, red highlights chased themselves
around the annulus and the blade began to keen. He did not bow to her, though, nor reach out to take her hand. The captain was not planning to honour the doomed one — not after she had killed her overseer.
He drew the blade back. Then a girl screamed, ‘No!’ and yellow rocks were falling all around them. One bounced off the left-hand guard’s chin, rocking him backwards like a punch in the face, and another struck the captain in his right eye.
‘Come on, Tali!’ shrieked Rannilt from the darkness.
Before Tali could run, the second guard locked his arms around her and held her.
‘Get after the child,’ said the captain, rubbing his streaming eye.
Two men advanced into the darkness.
‘Run, Rannilt,’ yelled Tali.
‘Hold her while I do the business,’ said the captain. The guards held Tali upright and again leaned away.
‘Master, help me!’ howled Tinyhead.
‘Him too,’ snapped the captain. ‘Cut the traitor down.’
More guards ran into the dark. The captain wiped his eye and hefted the Living Blade.
Wil let out a shriek and burst free of the man holding him. ‘She the one. Kill the one and Cython burns.’
CHAPTER 43
Wil had alkoyl, Tali was sure of it. And alkoyl ignited combustible materials at a touch. But the Living Blade was swinging back. There wasn’t time to think things through — only to pray that it would work.
‘Wil!’ she yelled. ‘Run your alkoyl across the ground.’
‘What’s she talking about?’ said the captain. ‘What’s Wil got? Check him, Borst.’
The yellow-haired guard made a lunge for Wil, who twisted the cap off a platina tube and scuttled away, dribbling green alkoyl across the sulphur ground from one mud pit to the other.
The ground seethed up knee-high in yellow foam, caught fire and the sulphur burnt with a towering red flame and dense clouds of white smoke. A breeze drifted it into the faces of the guards, who began to reel about, gasping and choking.
Tali brought her elbow up into the throat of the man holding her, doubling him over, then ducked under the Living Blade and drove her head into the captain’s belly. He went over backwards, dropping the blade, which sang as it cut into the sulphurous ground.