by Ian Irvine
Quite some time after that, there came a brilliant flash from the direction of the Hornrace. Jal-Nish snapped upright onto his toes, and his arm reached up to the sky, the red-tipped fingers clawed. His mouth opened in a silent cry, then he fell to his knees again, gasping. Green scum foamed through the mouth hole of the mask.
‘That was our chance,’ said Flydd. ‘Unfortunately I can’t do anything with it. The tears haven’t released me.’ He glanced at Nish. ‘I wasn’t joking about the cottage and the flowers, lad. Even gnarled old scrutators dream of retiring one day.’
‘It has less to recommend it than you might imagine,’ said Yggur dryly.
‘Oh well,’ said Flydd. ‘It’s not going to happen now.’
‘No, but let’s defy him to the end. If we can’t defeat him, at least we can show him up by the manner of our deaths.’
Jal-Nish slowly began to recover. He wiped his chin and pushed himself to his feet. His hand moved towards the tears but stopped before it reached them. Flydd spoke out of the corner of his mouth to Yggur. Nish didn’t catch what was said. Yggur took a long time to answer.
He broke off. Jal-Nish had recovered and was heading their way, supported by his guards. ‘Gather them up for the trial,’ he said, his voice slightly slurred.
The guards dragged Yggur and Flydd to their feet. Others seized Nish and Irisis. Troist, Fyn-Mah and Flangers were led from another direction, along with the surviving army officers.
They were hauled into the centre of the square, each with a guard at their back, and there they stood for an hour or more, unmoving, while Jal-Nish vented his rage at them. Nish began to feel faint. He swayed on his feet and the guard smacked him in the ear.
‘Don’t move!’
A distant flash illuminated part of the sky. Shortly Nish saw another, and a third. The earth shivered beneath him and some time after that he heard a rumble in the western distance. Even the guards looked that way.
‘Tiaan’s done it this time,’ said Flydd in the common speech of the south-east, which these guards would probably not know. ‘Get ready to run.’
There were further flashes, more ground shakes. Another rumble sounded, closer, then another, closer still. Jal-Nish was trying vainly to see what was happening. He clutched at the tears, suddenly uncertain of his power.
‘The tears won’t do you any good, Scrutator,’ Flydd sneered. ‘Tiaan’s succeeded this time.’
‘At what?’ Jal-Nish said furiously. There was a brittle edge to his voice.
‘Over the past year she’s mapped all the nodes, and the links between them,’ said Yggur, speaking slowly and precisely. ‘She’s found a way to destroy them all –’
A flash that lit up the sky was followed within seconds by a far louder boom.
‘– including the tears around your neck, Jal-Nish.’
With a great shudder, Jal-Nish tore the chain and the tears from his neck and made to hurl them into the crowd. The humming of the tears became a shrill wailing. But then, with an effort of will, he held them back.
‘I’ve nothing to fear from death. I look forward to it.’ Jal-Nish put the chain around his neck again, though as the tears touched his chest he was overcome by a shudder of horror. The song of the tears died away to nothing.
They all stared at him, expecting to die in a monstrous conflagration. More roars and booms were heard, some only leagues away, others just a tickle of the air or a shudder through the ground. Finally, red roiling clouds erupted into the sky less than a league away along the cliffs, the whole square rocked, and there was silence.
Someone screamed in the crowd. It was Pilot Chissmoul, her face a mask of anguish as she realised that she’d never operate a thapter again.
Absolute silence. The song of the tears returned, a high-pitched, edgy sound, more potent than before. The first one to move was Jal-Nish. He put his hand into one of the tears, gave a visible wrench and the gravel danced a few paces away until it glowed white hot and sagged into a solid, molten mass.
Turning to the dumbstruck pair, Yggur and Flydd, he roared with laughter. ‘Oh, this is wonderful, glorious! The tears are a wild force, quite separate from nodes and fields. Tiaan has delivered Santhenar freely into my hands. I expected the fight of my life. Instead, I’ve won with no more than a whimper.’
‘What is it?’ cried Nish. ‘What’s gone wrong?’
Jal-Nish came right up to him. ‘I’ll tell you, idiot son.’ Pulling off the platinum mask he thrust his ravaged and pustulent face right in Nish’s.
Nish drew back in horror. He could not help it.
‘You show your true feelings toward your father, boy.’
‘What’s happened?’ cried Nish. ‘Tell me.’
‘Tiaan has destroyed all the nodes, and all the fields with them,’ Irisis said limply. ‘But when the tears were distilled from the Snizort node, it must have torn them free of the system of nodes and links. All power that relies on fields is gone, perhaps forever, but Jal-Nish has lost none of his.’
‘And now I’m going to crush the lot of you,’ said Jal-Nish, ‘beginning with you, Xervish Flydd. Take him over there. I’m not going to draw this out – I’ve a world to set in order.’
Four guards seized Flydd, but before they could haul him away he managed to turn towards Yggur and gave an almost imperceptible nod.
‘Get ready,’ Yggur muttered to Nish and Irisis. ‘Klarm’s about to attack.’
Nish looked over his shoulder. His guards were a few paces away now. ‘Klarm’s going to do something,’ he said softly. ‘Get ready to run.’
‘What’s he going to do?’ said Irisis.
‘I don’t know.’
Nish met Yggur’s eye. Yggur flexed his fingers. ‘If any one of us falls behind,’ he said quietly, ‘we must be abandoned for the good of the struggle. It’s going to be a long one.’
‘I know the rules of war,’ said Nish. ’Where do we run?
‘To Jal-Nish’s air-dreadnought. I have a concealed crystal, though it won’t drive such a big air-floater far. Let’s hope it’s far enough.’
Flydd had been hauled over next to the molten patch of gravel, which was still glowing. He spat on it as he went past and a small puff of steam rose there.
‘Xervish Flydd,’ said Jal-Nish, ‘you are hereby –’
‘Before you do the business, Jal-Nish,’ Flydd said with studied casualness, ‘could you answer one question for me?’
‘Be damned!’ said Jal-Nish. ‘I’ll give you no satisfaction whatsoever.’
Flydd shrugged. ‘Oh well. I didn’t think it could be you. You don’t have that kind of power.’ He wasn’t looking at Jal-Nish, but in the direction of the cloth-covered banquet table they’d sat at earlier. Nish casually glanced that way but couldn’t see anything.
‘What are you talking about?’ said Jal-Nish.
‘I didn’t think you could possibly be the Numinator – you don’t have the nobility either.’
‘Numinator? What the devil are you talking about?’
‘Nothing,’ said Flydd. ‘It doesn’t matter at all.’
Nish caught Yggur’s eye. Jal-Nish doesn’t know that there’s a higher power than the scrutators, Nish thought. One tiny advantage for us. Perhaps.
‘Enough of your pathetic mind games,’ said Jal-Nish. ‘I –’
Again he broke off. Out of the corner of his eye Nish saw Klarm slide out from under the tablecloth, stand up and bowl something towards them, underarm. Nish couldn’t tell what it was at first, but as it sped across the ground he realised that it was Golias’s globe. What did he hope to achieve? The globe had a self-powered crystal at its core, but that was all.
Jal-Nish watched it all the way. Nish exchanged glances with Irisis. He expected Golias’s globe to explode, but it simply rolled up to Jal-Nish, who stopped it with his foot and stood looking down at it.
‘Is this the best your half-sized ally can do?’ Jal-Nish sneered. He thrust one hand into the tears. ‘There’s no harm in the globe. It’s not been boo
by-trapped in any way.’
No, Klarm wouldn’t be that crude. He would use its true nature, but how? The farspeaker was just eight concentric glass spheres filled with quicksilver, and the crystal at the centre. The self-powered crystal.
Jal-Nish was about to kick the globe out of the way when Yggur moved his bound hands in a particular way. The globe instantly glowed hot, then its layers split from the inside to the outside and a cone of boiling quicksilver burst out.
It caught Jal-Nish across the exposed cheek and the platinum mask. He reeled back, screaming and tearing at the mask. The soldiers holding Flydd also went down, letting out anguished squeals, for boiling quicksilver was hotter than molten lead. Flydd had known to turn his head away in time, but drops of quicksilver burned smoking holes through his coat. Three of the troops by Nish and Yggur also fell, struck down by crossbow fire.
‘Run!’ Klarm roared. The table was thrown over and his three soldiers fired from behind it. Klarm pointed a glassy rod and the remaining soldiers went down like a series of coloured dolls.
Jal-Nish had the platinum mask off and was clawing at the festering hideousness that it concealed, making a keening noise like an injured beast as he tried to rend out the embedded, burning globules. Bloody, smoking welts were rising across his mouth and cheeks, and the area that had been beneath the overheated mask looked red-raw.
Flydd hacked through his bonds with a shard of glass and tried to get to the tears, but Jal-Nish’s scrabbling fingers reached them first, throwing up a clear barrier around himself. He crouched on the ground inside it, squealing in agony, but he still had his hand in the tears.
‘Come on!’ shouted Flydd. ‘We can’t do anything here.’ He began to lurch in the direction of the air-dreadnought, his cloak trailing fumes.
Klarm appeared beside Yggur, slashing his bonds, then those of the other prisoners. Yggur took off like a hare for the air-dreadnought, his long legs flashing. Troist and Fyn-Mah ran too. Flangers was running towards the crowd. Irisis and Nish followed.
As they were three-quarters of the way to the craft, one of the guards rose shakily to his knees and sent his sword spinning through the air. The back of the blade struck Nish behind the knees and he went down. He tried to get up but his whole leg had gone numb.
Flydd, Yggur, Fyn-Mah and Troist were climbing into the air-dreadnought. Klarm wasn’t far behind, not looking back. Flangers was running around the edge of the crowd, carrying a silent Chissmoul. Irisis glanced over her shoulder, saw Nish on the ground and skidded to a stop.
‘No, Irisis,’ he screamed. ‘Go, go!’
She came running back and helped him up. ‘Put your arm across my shoulder.’
‘I can’t walk,’ Nish said. His father was already on his feet. Two more of the guards were up now, and staggering towards them. ‘Run, Irisis. He won’t hurt me, but he’ll flay you alive.’
‘I’m not leaving you,’ she said stubbornly. ‘We can still get there.’
‘Please, Irisis,’ he begged. The soldiers were recovering, starting to trot.
‘No, Nish.’ She picked him up in her arms and headed for the air-dreadnought as fast as she could go.
Nish looked back. It would be a near thing. The soldiers were recovering rapidly, running now. He looked for help at the air-dreadnought, but Klarm had just cast his useless crystal on the ground and the others weren’t armed. Jal-Nish’s guards had cut down Klarm’s soldiers, and now the air-dreadnought began to lift at the stern.
‘Put me down, Irisis. Please.’
She glanced over her shoulder and tried to run harder, but before they were even close to the air-dreadnought, the guards had their swords at Irisis’s throat.
She clung to Nish’s neck for a moment. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said.
‘Ah, Irisis,’ he wept. ‘Why did you come back? He hates you more than anyone.’
‘Because you’re my dearest friend, Nish,’ she said simply, ‘and I love you as I’ve never loved anyone before. I couldn’t leave you, even at the cost of my life.’
The air-dreadnought rose into the air, turned away and disappeared over the trees.
The guards tied Nish and Irisis’s hands and dragged them back to the middle of the square, where Jal-Nish still swayed inside his protective barrier. He had forced the mask back on over his swollen, raw cheeks. Blood formed congealed drops on his chin. Quicksilver had puddled at his feet and its vapour drifted around the inside of the barrier. He pried his eye open and fixed on Irisis.
‘Put her there,’ he slurred through lips that were bursting apart.
Jal-Nish pointed to the glassy patch on the ground, no longer molten but still hot. They stood her on it.
‘Irisis Stirm,’ said Jal-Nish, allowing the barrier to fade away. ‘Two years I’ve waited for this day.’
‘I’ll bet you have – I know your kind all too well,’ she said with an arrogant lift of her chin.
‘And I know yours. The world was a better place when women knew their place in it. Cryl-Nish’s mother taught me that lesson. She only wanted me for what I had, and once I became this maimed monster, in the service of my world, she cast me out.’
‘You were a monster long before Ryll put his claws in you,’ said Irisis.
‘And you were a liar, a cheat and a fraud, as the record of your trial at the manufactory shows only too well. For fifteen years you’ve been an artisan under false pretences, an offence punishable by death.’
‘I recovered my powers long ago. Besides, the war is over, Jal-Nish. It doesn’t matter any more.’
‘The war is only just beginning, and the first stage is to rid the world of those who betrayed it: you and Tiaan most of all. You destroyed my life, though that matters not. You conspired to save the debauched, depraved, flesh-forming lyrinx, the greatest abominations this world has ever seen. You cozened and coddled and yes, maybe even mated with them –’
‘You’re sick, Jal-Nish. You’re mad.’
‘You set the lyrinx free!’ he screamed. ‘You gave them a world of their own, and one day they’ll be back. For that alone you must die. Beg and grovel all you like –’
Smoke was rising from Irisis’s boots but she did not flinch. ‘Then die I will,’ she said calmly, ‘but it won’t make a jot of difference.’
‘Oh, I think it will,’ he hissed.
‘I go to my death knowing that I’ve fought for what was right and good,’ she said. ‘Whereas you, Jal-Nish, if you live to be a hundred, will always know that you gambled with the lives of your soldiers, lost, then ran like a cur from the battlefield. That’s the kind of man you are, and the Histories will tell of it long after my name is forgotten.’
How Irisis had grown from the petty, mean-spirited woman Nish had once known. She was entirely selfless and noble now, and it threw Jal-Nish’s character into sharp relief.
He knew it, too. He could not meet her eyes for the moment, but then he said, ‘The means is justification enough. I’ve won the world, and he who owns the world writes the Histories.’
‘May you have joy of your victory, you craven dog! I’d sooner die than live in a world of your shaping.’
‘And die you will. The greatest pleasure of victory is revenge, and mine will be unending. Guards!’
The guards dragged Irisis to her knees. Her yellow hair hung over her face, but she tossed her head and looked Jal-Nish in the eye, defiant to the last. To Nish she was the most beautiful sight in the world.
‘You’ll never break me,’ she said, ‘though you torture me for a thousand years.’
‘There’s more than one way to break a person,’ Jal-Nish said, testing the blade of a soldier’s outstretched sword with his thumb. ‘I have no need to torture you. Guards, let it be done.’
Nish broke free of his guards. ‘Father, no,’ he screamed. ‘Please, no!’
‘Nothing you say can change her fate,’ said Jal-Nish, with a look so hideous that it made Nish’s flesh creep.
‘No. Take me instead.’ He threw out h
is arms in entreaty, weeping so hard that he could barely see.
‘You?’ said Jal-Nish. ‘But you are my beloved son.’
‘That’s not what you said when you condemned me to death at Snizort.’
‘I was wrong about you, my son. Since then, you have proven yourself. I am well pleased with you, Cryl-Nish, for without you I would not have her.’
‘Then grant me one small favour. Please, Father. Give her life into my custody.’
‘A favour?’ Jal-Nish pretended to consider it. ‘And what will you give me in return?’
‘Anything, Father. Just name it.’
‘Then serve me, Cryl-Nish. I could force you, with the compulsion I laid on you at Gumby Marth, but I’d rather you aided me willingly. Be my son and heir as you have never been. Stand at my right hand and help me tame this unruly world.’
Out of the corner of his eye Nish saw the nose of the air-dreadnought peeping from behind the trees. Flydd and Yggur must have armed themselves. If they’d found enough power to overcome his greatly weakened father, it might be all right after all.
Nish felt a glimmer of hope. ‘Yes, Father. I will serve you.’
‘Splendid. And in return, I give her life into your custody.’
‘Thank you,’ said Nish, surprised that it had been so easy. ‘What would you have me do with Irisis?’
‘Guard,’ said Jal-Nish, inclining his head towards Nish.
The guard handed Nish his sword.
‘I don’t understand,’ said Nish, clenching the hilt so tightly that his arm shook.
‘Take her head from her shoulders, Nish, if you truly would serve me.’
‘But …’ Nish looked from Jal-Nish to Irisis, then back to Jal-Nish. ‘You promised to save her life.’
‘I did not; only to give it into your custody. And so I shall, for you to give me what you promised in return. Anything I want, I believe you said. I want her head.’
‘And if I do not?’
‘The guard does it for you. You have rather a dilemma, Cryl-Nish.’
Nish felt as if his eyes were boiling out of his face. Then he snapped and leapt at his father, swinging the sword in a wild arc.
‘You made the wrong decision, Son,’ said Jal-Nish, placing his hand into the left-most tear, and Nish’s blade glanced harmlessly off the renewed shield. Jal-Nish raised his hand and one of the bags of the air-dreadnought burst with a boom. It turned sharply and wobbled across the sky, out of sight.