by Ian Irvine
The facinore should be close to the caverns by now. So profane a creature could not enter the Abysm, but the moment Tali emerged with the pearl she must be taken. Lyf directed his failing strength into a command to the facinore. A command he prayed it would obey.
Find the host. Hold her.
Do not feed!
CHAPTER 81
The blood moon broke free of racing clouds, illuminating a body — no, two bodies — sprawled ten yards away up the long rubble slope leading to the cave mouth. The broken rock was stained all around, as though the blood had burst forth when the victims were torn open.
Rannilt was gasping, in, in, in with never an out-breath to balance. Tobry went so still in the saddle he might have frozen to it.
Too late, Rix thought bleakly, and it was his stupid fault. Why, after the revelation about the ebony pearls, hadn’t he gone after Tali at once? She had been in such a state that she was bound to do something reckless, like racing off to rescue Rannilt from the chancellor. And the chancellor was utterly single-minded. To protect Hightspall he would use anyone, even Tali. He would cast her into any danger to give himself a tiny advantage, then discard her wreckage afterwards.
Rannilt let out a despairing cry and tried to throw herself from the saddle. Tobry clamped his arm around her. She jammed an elbow into his belly, squirmed under his arm and dropped to the ground.
Rix leapt after her to shield her from the dreadful sight, but she was too quick for him. She scrabbled up the slope on hands and knees, rubble clattering behind her, then froze, staring. The first body was a tall, broad-shouldered woman, the second a smaller one with dark, curly hair, and both had been opened at the belly as if their attacker had feasted on their living organs, then left them. Nothing else had been touched.
‘Facinore did this!’ whispered Rannilt, shedding tears that froze as they fell and shattered to jewel-like shards of ice with the lustre of gold.
‘I’ve seen her before,’ said Tobry, bending over the dark-haired woman as the moonlight waxed and waned. ‘She was one of the chancellor’s most trusted guards, and almost in your class with a blade, Rix.’ He gave a convulsive shudder.
Rix gripped him by the shoulder. Tobry had vowed to never come back here. ‘How far behind are we?’
Tobry checked the bodies. ‘There’s a trace of warmth left. Doubt if they’ve been dead an hour.’
‘An hour’s a long time when you’re up against a facinore. Can you still see the threads, Rannilt?’
Her dark eyes showed white all around. She nodded but did not speak. Tobry took her hand and they went up the rubble slope and in. Despite the cold, which became fiercer with every step, the stone basin was unfrozen. Rannilt turned towards it, as if to drink, but before Rix could warn her she threw up her hands and backed away.
‘What is it, child?’ said Tobry. ‘What can you see?’
‘Mad patterns.’ They passed by. Something squelched underfoot. ‘What’s that horrible smell?’
‘Shifter dung,’ said Rix, scraping it off his boot on a projecting rock. The back of the cave, and the cavern beyond it, reeked of their manure. Were the shifters from the pens below roaming free? ‘I’ve got an unpleasant feeling we’re being watched.’
Tobry’s jaw was clenched tightly enough to crack his teeth. Why was he so afraid of shifters? Was it the fear of becoming one, like Tobry’s grandfather who had brought House Lagger to ruin? Rix had never asked about the details and Tobry had not volunteered them.
Some friend I am, Rix thought bleakly. He’s always supported me, and what have I ever done for him? How can I do this to him again?
The fear was contagious. Rannilt was clinging to Tobry’s hand now, looking anxiously up at him. Rix swallowed. Lyf had nearly beaten them here last time and, down in his lair, close to his ebony pearl, he must be far more powerful. He had tried to possess Tobry and take control of him more than once. What if he succeeded?
Why are all my choices so bad, Rix wondered. I can only save the chancellor, and perhaps Hightspall, by betraying my mother and my house. And if Lyf possesses Tobry …?
He shook the unease off and concentrated on now. They were at the maze and he did not know the way through. Nor did he want Tobry to use magery here.
‘Come up here beside me, Rannilt,’ said Rix. ‘Show me the way with your threads.’
She crept forwards, looking up at him. He extended his left hand. Rannilt bit her lip; he did not think she trusted him overmuch. But when she put her small hand in his huge one he felt a surge of protectiveness and understood how Tobry felt about her. Why had they brought her here? They’d known where Tali was headed.
‘This way. Come on.’ She tugged at his hand, her courage showing them both up. No, what she had was far greater than mere courage. Rannilt was terrified, yet she never faltered.
They went down, following the drifting threads only she could see. Why were the shifters free? Were they guarding the place for Lyf? Or had they been sent to the war? Rix prayed they had — there was no hope of surviving a pack attack in here.
Rannilt was breathing hoarsely, the air whistling through her parted lips, and her hand kept clenching against his. What was she sensing? Where was the facinore? The back of his neck prickled. He still felt sure they were being watched; stalked.
They went down the glassy steps that had previously ended in mid-air but now continued into the flaskoid chamber Rix had distantly glimpsed last time. Its top was ringed with kingly and queenly statues, save that their translucent heads turned and their eyes moved as Rix, Tobry and Rannilt approached.
‘Ghosts!’ whispered Rannilt, her nails digging into Rix’s hand.
‘The greatest kings and queens of ancient Cythe,’ Tobry said quietly. ‘But not real ghosts. Lyf must have created them.’
‘As a first line of defence?’ said Rix.
Tobry waved his elbrot. Rannilt let out a little gasp.
‘Don’t use magery here!’ Rix hissed.
‘I don’t think they can harm us,’ said Tobry. ‘Besides, Lyf must know we’re here by now.’
‘Is that supposed to comfort me?’
‘Shh!’ said Rannilt.
As they passed on down, several of the kings raised translucent hands, cursing them in reedy voices and ordering them back. Rannilt let out a moan. Rix’s stomach clenched painfully, as if around a broken brick.
‘Where’s the wrythen?’ said Rix. ‘Where’s Lyf?’
‘If he’s not here,’ said Tobry, ‘it’s more than we could have hoped for. Keep moving.’
‘I don’t like it. Why isn’t he here?’
‘Get going.’
At the bottom, Rix went right and, a third of the way around the curving wall, encountered a bookcase with four shelves formed from the same shiny substance. The top shelf held five books, the second, nine. Even to Rix’s prosaic eyes there was something strange, beautiful and deadly about them, but he had not come here to look at books.
Tobry stopped and studied the titles of the age-worn volumes on the top shelf, whose covers were written in the Hightspall script. ‘The Songs of Survival,’ he said, frowning. ‘Have you heard of them, Rix?’
‘I don’t even read Hightspall’s great books,’ snapped Rix. ‘Come on!’
Tobry turned to the second shelf. ‘The Lore of Prosperity. And the titles are, On Delven, On Metallix, On Smything, On Catalyz … Do they sound like instruction manuals to you?’
As he reached out to touch On Catalyz, Rix’s sword rattled in its scabbard. He dropped a hand to steady it but the sword shot upwards, slamming into his palm, and auras flared around all fourteen books.
Tobry whipped his hand back and the auras faded, but the aura around another book did not — a book made from grey sheet iron, with cast-iron covers, lying open on a pitted stone table. An engraver’s scriber lay beside the book and a corroded platina flask on its side on the table, as though cast there when empty. Most unnerving, the deeply etched letters on the open pages were the colour
of burning blood.
‘The Solaces,’ Rannilt whispered.
‘What are the Solaces?’ Rix approached the iron book, warily.
‘Wil said they’re precious books that tell the matriarchs of Cython what to do.’
‘But what are they doing here?’ Rix bent over the open book.
‘Don’t touch anything,’ said Tobry, staring at the book through his elbrot, then shaking his head. ‘Rannilt, can you tell — ’
She was staring the other way, up at the point where the flaskoid passed back through itself. Her teeth chattered.
Rix could see nothing save a slight blur there. ‘What is it?’
‘Tali!’ Rannilt screeched, tearing her hand free and running forwards. ‘Look out! It’s waiting for you.’
CHAPTER 82
Icy waves crept down Tali’s back as the black pearl drifted off the disc and crept towards her outstretched hand. Was Lyf’s pearl responding to her own?
Take it and run! You don’t have to fight Lyf now. Steal the pearl and you damage him, and strengthen yourself to fight him on your own ground. And it’ll help the war too, and please the chancellor.
She was about to close her fingers around it when the gift rose inside her, though it had done that before only to retreat again. How could she bring it to the surface? It was a question Tali had asked a thousand times without ever finding an answer, but she sensed the answer was not far away.
You can only defeat your enemy with magery, but the only person who can teach you how to use your magery is your enemy.
Her head throbbed as though something hard — the master pearl? — was grinding against the inside of her skull, and the bands of colour were dazzling. She was close to a source of phenomenal power, but where was it? Within the pearl, or were pearls merely the key that unlocked a greater power?
And if unlocked, how could she use it? The white torrent that had shorn Banj’s head off had been uncontrollable, and she had been so ill afterwards that without Rannilt she would have been killed. But Banj had been just a man. To fight such a master as Lyf she too must have mastery, yet magery rarely came easily and mastery never quickly.
A first-day apprentice could not hope to defeat her master. Take the damned pearl and go, before he comes back.
The pearl quivered and, without knowing how, Tali understood that she was trespassing in a forbidden place. Not Lyf’s place, but something far older. Something private, sacred, never to be entered by her kind.
The pearl called like a lost, frantic child, and instinctively she tried to calm it, stroke it, but as her fingers grazed the black surface, patterns began to radiate inwards from all around the shaft and she did not need the spectible to see them.
Complicated bands of swirling colour, twisting and writhing, spinning out and frilling and coiling back on themselves, and every little bump and node and coil had its own coiled pattern that mimicked the greater structure, down to the smallest size that she could see. Could the pattern be the key to power? The temptation to look deeper, to win the prize, was irresistible.
She looked down, wondering where the Abysm led to. Tali stroked the pearl and sensed a throbbing power far below, beyond anything any mortal could wield. If she could take a tiny fraction of it, could she command her magery?
Ssst, sssst!
Now grey flecks and threads were revealed, whizzing down the shaft all around her, and she caught snatches of sonorous, solemn speech. The words made no sense, yet vague rumours rose unbidden — half-remembered conversations between Cythonians, overheard ages ago, about their most secret and sacred place. A place where none of them would think of venturing, the very conduit between creation and destruction, life and death …
Could this shaft be part of the Abysm down which Cythonian souls were said to pass after death? It must be, and her presence here was a dreadful sacrilege. Tali’s cheeks were scalding — not even in war would she willingly trespass on her enemy’s sacred places, but she did not know how to get out. There was no sign of the crack through which she had entered.
Way down, as far as she could see, something reflected brightly, the colours changing constantly as it moved. It was a tiny figure of a man, apparently carved from black opal. No, not tiny, it was life-sized, with furious, glaring eyes that could almost have been alive. It was drawn down, only to bob up again, over and over, as if something prevented it from going deeper. Was it a relic or offering cast into the Abysm to accompany a soul as it passed beyond?
It had nothing to do with her. Focus! Why had Lyf hidden the pearl here? For its protection, or did he haunt the Abysm because he had not been given the proper rituals after death? Because his spirit had never passed on, Tali knew that the sacred king-magery had been lost upon his death, and without it no new king could be crowned. Was that why he was so desperate to get the five pearls? To gain a new source of magery?
The pearl was still now. The rush of threads past her slowed, the snatches of speech faded, then Tali’s hair stirred in a warm up-current that carried with it a familiar oily-sweet odour with an underlying bitterness. Alkoyl — the deadly chymical fluid that had eaten that young woman’s leg off in the back tunnels of Cython, the stuff Wil had used to set the sulphur ground in the Seethings ablaze. Why was she smelling it here?
‘I’ll have to send down the Hellish Conduit for more,’ the master chymister had said, ‘if I can get anyone to go.’
He had shuddered as he spoke. Was the Abysm linked to the conduit, and if so, what lay at the other end of it that contained such awful power?
Tali dismissed the distracting questions she could not resolve. Take the pearl and run. She was reaching out for it, and it was trembling as if it yearned for her touch, when she heard that strident, angry, false call …
The facinore must have scented her and it was moving her way. Was the shadow shifter in the Abysm, or outside? Terror numbed her for a minute; Tali fought it down. Outside, she thought. Lyf would not allow that foul creature into such a holy place.
If she went out, it would attack. But she could not stay here either, because Lyf could return at any time. To take on the facinore, however, she had to have magery and lots of it.
She edged towards the pearl, trying not to alarm it. It occurred to Tali that, when she had used her gift as a child, she had also seen tangles of colour in her head. Each time, in a fury, she had snatched at one of those tangles and hurled it at her foe, not realising she was using a clumsy kind of magery.
The spectible revealed spirals of colour spinning out of Lyf’s pearl in a complex pattern where the smallest part contained the whole. Prudence told her to fly with Lyf’s pearl, but when would she have a better chance to decipher her own pearl than here in the Abysm, where the patterns of magery were so bright and clear? I’ll give it one minute, she thought, and if I learn nothing about my pearl, I’ll go.
She concentrated on the tangles writhing through her inner eye, trying to reconcile them with the endless spirals coming from Lyf’s pearl. The colours in her head were whirling and twisting randomly — or were they?
What if she was only seeing a tiny part of the pattern, because she was looking at it from inside? It would be like trying to decipher the structure of the universe by peering at the night sky through a pinhole.
She fixed the spiral from Lyf’s pearl in her memory, tried to imagine a similar spiral coming from her own pearl and, for a moment, Tali glimpsed the whole glorious pattern radiating from her pearl, and understood it. Before it could disappear she reached out with her mind’s eye, took hold of a tiny piece of the pattern and drew it into herself. And as she did, her magery rose inside her all the way to the surface, not in a chaotic, uncontrollable surge, but steadily, like a well that could be drawn upon at need.
Tears stung her eyes. At last!
But a long time had passed. Quick! Grab the pearl. Go!
The instant she snatched at it, Tali knew it was the wrong thing to do, but the realisation came too late. The pearl shot backwards o
ut of reach, shrieking the call. And far away, Lyf answered in a strangled cry of fear and fury.
She sensed him attempting to separate from the unpleasant mind he was possessing — a magian and killer who had three pearls, stolen from Lyf. And Tali’s mental shell was wide open; she could not close it without also closing off her magery. Even if Lyf was in Caulderon, where she had previously sensed the triple call, di-DA- doh?Di-DA- doh, his consciousness could cross the distance quickly.
Trapped! Why had she delayed? Outside, in the flaskoid chamber, the facinore howled and clawed at the crack.
‘Come!’ Tali made the word a command.
The pearl spun away towards its hiding place. She dived after it, but it vanished, then the crack opened and she was ejected into the main chamber.
She raised her hands to blast the facinore but her magery sank out of sight like the water level in an over-pumped well — as if only in the power-saturated Abysm was it possible. A repulsive stench blasted up her nostrils then something scabbed and slimy clamped around her ankle.
The facinore had her.
CHAPTER 83
Rix saw a golden nimbus form around Rannilt only to be slammed back into her. She yelped, clenched her pointed jaw and the nimbus reformed, brighter. Again it was driven back into her. Rannilt let out a strained groan, pressed her hands together like a diver and thrust them upwards at the blur.
The facinore was clinging to the wall like a chameleon to a branch. It reached up, yanked and Tali appeared there, upside-down, suspended by the ankle from its right hand.
‘Rix?’ Tali wailed, ‘why did you bring Rannilt here?’
Rix was asking himself the same question. The facinore had felt Rannilt’s great gift before, and it would not be long before Lyf knew she was here.