by Ian Irvine
It was already an inch deep. The watching healer separated into two fuzzy images and Tali’s head seemed to be revolving independently of her body, a sickening feeling that made her worry about throwing up. What would happen if she did while that great hollow spike ran down her artery? Would it tear out the other side? Not even Dibly could save her then.
Tali’s vision blurred until all she could see was a uniform brown. Her senses disconnected save for the freezing feeling in her neck and a tick, tick, tick as her lifeblood drained away -
The brownness was blown into banners like smog before the wind and she saw him. Her enemy, Lyf! She shivered. He was feeling in a crevice in the wall. She cried out, involuntarily, for he was in a chamber that looked eerily like the cellar where her eight-year-old self had seen her mother murdered for her ebony pearl. It had the same half-domed shape, not unlike a skull…
It was the murder cellar, though everything had been removed and every surface scrubbed back to expose the bare stone of the ceiling and walls. Before being profaned by treachery and murder, this chamber had been one of the oldest and most sacred places in ancient Cythe — the private temple of the kings.
What was Lyf doing? He was alone save for a group of greybeard ghosts — Tali recognised some of them from the ancestor’s gallery he had created long ago in the wrythen’s caverns. Lyf had a furtive air, lifting stones up and putting them down, then checking over his shoulder as though afraid he was being watched.
“Hurry!” said a spectre so ancient that he had faded to a transparent wisp, though his voice was strong and urgent. “The key must be found. Without it, all you’ve done is for nothing.”
What key? What could be so vital that without it everything Lyf had done — saving his people and capturing the great city at the heart of Hightspall — was as nothing? And who was this ancient spectre who was telling the king what to do?
The blood-loss vision faded and she saw nothing more.
“You shouldn’t bait her, Tali. Madam Dibly is just doing what I ordered her to do.”
Tali was so weak that she could not open her eyes, but she recognised the voice coming from the folding chair beside the camp bed. The chancellor.
“Ugh!” she said.
She tried to form words but they would not come, and that frightened her. She had been robbed of far more than two pints of blood. Part of her life and health had been taken from her. She was enslaved again, but this was far worse than the enslavement she had endured in Cython. There she’d had a degree of freedom, and vigorous health. There, those who worked hard and never caused trouble were relatively safe.
But the chancellor was using her like a prized cow — she was fed and looked after to ensure she could be milked of the maximum amount of blood. And once her body gave out, would she be discarded like a milkless cow?
There was also Rannilt to consider. If the blood-taking could weaken Tali so drastically, what must it be doing to the skinny little child who had been near death only days ago?
“You can stop all this,” said the chancellor. For such a small, ugly, hunchbacked man, his voice was surprisingly deep and authoritative.
“How?” she managed to whisper.
Her eyes fluttered open. She was in his tent, the largest of all, and she saw the shadow of a guard outside the flap. The man was not needed; Tali lacked the strength to raise her head.
The side of her neck throbbed. She felt bruised from shoulder bone to ear.
“I know you’re holding out on me,” said the chancellor. “Tell me what I need to know and I’ll order Madam Dibly to stop.”
Had Tali not been so weak, she would have started and given her secret away. If he guessed that she hosted the fifth pearl inside her, the master pearl that could magnify his chief magian’s wizardry tenfold, how could the chancellor resist cutting it out?
Hightspall was losing the war because its magery had dwindled drastically over the centuries. With the master pearl the chancellor could have it back. With the master pearl, his adepts might even command the four pearls that Lyf held. He might win the war, and even undo some of the harm Lyf’s corrupt sorcery had done to Hightspall. Such as the shifters that Lyf had created for one purpose only — to spread terror and ruin throughout the land, and turn good people into ravening monsters like themselves.
Like Tobry, her first and only love turned into the kind of beast he had dreaded becoming all his life. But Tobry’s suffering was over.
Should she give up the master pearl? It wasn’t that simple. According to Deroe, ebony pearls could not be used properly within — or by — the women who hosted them, though he might have been lying. She could not tell. To gain their full strength, the pearls had to be cut out and healed in the host’s blood, which was invariably fatal. Tali could only give up the pearl by sacrificing her own life.
Someone nobler than her might have made that sacrifice for her country, but Tali could not. Before escaping from Cython she had sworn a binding blood oath, and until she had fulfilled it she did not have the freedom to consider any other course.
“Don’t know… what you’re talking about,” she said at last.
“You’re lying,” said the chancellor. “But I can wait.”
“You’re a failure, Chancellor. You’ve lost the centre of Hightspall and you’re losing the war.”
He winced. “I admit it, though only to you. According to my spies, Lyf is already tearing down Caulderon, the greatest city in the known world, and rounding up a long list of enemies.”
She hadn’t thought of that. “What’s he going to do to them?”
“Put them to death, of course.”
“But that’s… evil!”
The chancellor sighed. “No, just practical. It’s what you do when you capture a city — you hunt down the troublemakers and make sure they can’t cause any trouble.”
“Does that include Rix?” said Tali.
“I’m told he’s number one on Lyf’s list.” The chancellor smiled wryly. “I feel a little hurt — why aren’t I on top?”
“I wish you were!” she snapped, then added, “I couldn’t bear it if Rix was killed as well.”
Though the chancellor despised Rix, he had the decency not to show it this time. “He’s a resourceful man. He could have escaped.”
“You chopped his hand off!” she said furiously. “How’s he supposed to fight without a right hand?”
“To escape a besieged city you need to avoid attention, not attract it.”
After a lengthy pause, he continued as though her problems, her tragedies, were irrelevant. Which, to him, they were.
“The enemy hold all of central Hightspall — the wealthy, fertile part. Now I’m limping like a three-legged hound to the fringes. But where am I to go, Tali, when the ice sheets are closing around the land from three sides? What am I to do?”
This was the strangest aspect of their relationship. One minute he was the ruthless master and she the helpless victim; the next he was confiding in her and seeking her advice as though she were his one true friend.
The chancellor was not, and could never be, her friend. He was a ruthless man who surrounded himself in surreal, twisted artworks, and with beautiful young women he never laid a finger on. He was not a kind man, or even a good one, but he had two virtues: he held to his word and he loved his country. He would do almost anything, sacrifice almost anyone, to save it, and if she wasn’t strong enough, if she didn’t fight him all the way, he would sacrifice her too.
“Why ask me? Where are you running to, Chancellor, with your tail between your crooked little legs?”
His smile was crooked, too. “I’ve been insulted by the best in the land. Do you think your second-rate jibes can scratch my corrugated hide?”
Tali slumped. She was so weak that five minutes of verbal jousting was all she could manage.
“Is all lost, then?” she said faintly.
He took her hand, which was even more surprising. The chancellor was not given to touch
ing.
“Not yet, but it could soon be. I fear the worst, Tali, I’m not afraid to tell you. If you know anything that can help us, anything at all…”
She had to distract him from that line of thought. “Do you have a plan? For the war, I mean?”
“Rebuild my army and forge alliances, so when the time comes…”
“For a bold stroke?”
“Or a last desperate gamble. Possibly using you.”
Tali froze. Did he know about the ebony pearl? She turned to the brazier, afraid that her eyes would give her away.
“You gave me your word,” he went on.
Not her pearl. Worse. He was referring to the promise he had forced out of her in his red palace in Caulderon. That one day he might ask her to do the impossible and sneak into Cython to rouse the Pale to rebellion.
She did not consider the promise binding since it had been given under duress. But the blood oath she had sworn before escaping from Cython was binding, and it amounted to the same thing. With Cython depopulated because most of its troops had marched out to war, the vast numbers of Pale slaves there were a threat at the heart of Lyf’s empire.
Sooner or later he would decide to deal with the threat, and that was where Tali’s blood oath came in. She had sworn to do whatever it took to save her people. But before she could hope to, she would have to overcome her darkest fear — a return to slavery.
CHAPTER 4
The winter journey over the Crowbung Mountains, and the lower ranges beyond, took eight days of cold, exhaustion and pain. Tali saw nothing of the lands they were passing through, for the chancellor had taken pains to ensure that no spy could discover where she was.
She was confined to a covered wagon all the hours of daylight, disguised by a glamour the chief magian had cast over her. All she knew, from glimpses of the setting sun, was that they were heading west, then south-west.
Twice more she was taken to the healer’s tent at night so Madam Dibly could draw more blood. It was needed to heal valued people who had been bitten by shifters and thus turned to shifters themselves.
Tali had been waiting for it, hoping to have another of those blood-loss visions. What key was Lyf looking for, that mattered more than anything he had done so far? Finding out was the one way she could help the war effort. But, frustratingly, the vision had not been repeated.
“Does it work?” said Tali on the second occasion, “or are you putting me through all this out of spite?”
“I’m a healer!” cried Dibly, deeply affronted. “I look after my patients no matter what I think of them.” Her scowl indicated exactly what she thought of Tali.
“Does my blood work?” Tali repeated. “Or aren’t I allowed to know.”
“It heals most shifters — ”
“But not all?”
“Few panaceas work on every patient,” said Madam Dibly. “The blood you give so grudgingly heals most shifters, as long as it’s administered within a few days after they’ve been turned.”
“But not after that?”
“The longer they’ve been a shifter, the harder it is to turn them back. And once the shifter madness comes on them it’s no use at all…” Dibly looked away, her jaw tight, her eyelids screwed shut. “My brother was one of the bitten ones. Your blood came too late for him.”
“What happened?” said Tali, moved despite her dislike of the old healer.
“For everyone’s safety, the bitten ones have to be put down — like rabid dogs.” Madam Dibly wiped her eyes, then said harshly, “Lie down. Bare your throat.”
She only took a pint of blood this time. Tali tried to force another blood-loss vision by envisaging Lyf in his temple, but saw nothing. She was so exhausted she could only doze on the camp bed afterwards. If they took any more it was bound to be the end of her.
She was given the best of food, including more meat than she had eaten in her life, though after the third blood-taking Tali lacked the energy to chew it. Dibly had it made into rich stews which she dribbled down Tali’s throat from a spoon.
But today, the eighth day since leaving Caulderon, she felt better. The cold wasn’t so bitter, her throat felt less bruised, and she had enough strength to pull herself up to a sitting position, wedged in place by pillows. The cavalcade was heading down a steep, potholed track, the brakes squealing and the wagon lurching each time they grabbed the rims of the six-foot-high wheels.
“Where are we?” she asked.
“Approaching Rutherin,” said the healer, who was trying to write in a small, red-bound herbal.
Ruth-erin. The name had an unpleasant sound. “Is that a town?”
“It is, but we’re going to Fortress Rutherin, which is on the cliff-top above the town.”
“Can I see?”
Madam Dibly had mellowed after seeing how badly Tali had been affected by blood loss. She peered out between the curtains. “It can’t hurt, I suppose, since we’re high up and no one can see in.”
She drew the curtains wide and white light flooded in, momentarily dazzling Tali. Her throat constricted. For a few seconds the wagon rocked, as the dome of the sky had rocked the first time she had left the dim underworld of Cython for Hightspall. She had suffered her first attack of agoraphobia then, and now thought she was about to have another, but everything settled.
They had crossed the mountains and were winding down a steep hill towards the south-west coast. The sun was out and in the distance, as far as she could see, a dazzling field of white extended across the ocean. “Is that the ice?”
Madam Dibly seemed amused, in a grim sort of way. “Indeed it is, and creeping closer to Hightspall every year. When I was a girl it could only be seen from here in winter, at the furthest horizon.”
“Why is it coming closer?”
“The land we took from the enemy long ago is rising up against us.”
So people said, but Tali found it hard to believe. “But… so much ice. Where does it come from?”
“No one knows, but it cut Hightspall off long ago. Now we’re alone in the world — perhaps the only nation left…”
“Alone in the world,” said Tali, “and at the mercy of the ice.” She shivered.
“It’s closing off our southern ports, one by one, and creeping up the east and west coasts. Soon Hightspall will be ice-locked. Some say that our great volcanoes will stop it from covering the land the way it’s buried Suden, but surely ice will win over fire.” The grim smile faded.
“Is Rutherin a port town?” Tali said, trying to sound casual.
“It was, but don’t think there’s any escape that way. It’s a stranded port.”
“How do you mean?”
“As the ice sheets grow, the sea falls. It’s now a mile offshore and the old port — see it there, beside the town — is dry land. The fishing fleets no longer dock at Rutherin.”
Madam Dibly busied herself with her herbal. Tali stared hungrily out the gap in the curtains. But escape was impossible when she barely had the strength to stand up.
The wagon turned a corner, rattling and thumping down a track surfaced with chunks of broken rock. Over the heads of the horses she saw an ominous bastion of black stone. The native rock had been cut into knife-edged ridges around it to enclose it on both sides and the rear, while at the front there was a high wall and a pair of massive wooden gates which now stood open. On her left, the ridge fell away in a glassy black cliff that plunged down towards the town.
“What’s that place?” said Tali.
Madam Dibly whipped the curtains closed and sat down, breathing raggedly. “I told you, Fortress Rutherin.” She bent over her herbal.
“Aren’t I supposed to see it?”
“You can see it. No one is allowed to see you.”
“Why not?” said Tali, though she could guess the answer.
“You know Cython’s secrets, and the enemy wants you dead.”
No, Lyf wants me very much alive, so he can crack my head open and gouge out the master pearl. It had t
o be taken while she were alive; if she died, the pearl died with her.
Tali realised that Madam Dibly was looking at her curiously. Had she given something away? “Fortress Rutherin doesn’t look a very nice place,” she said hastily.
“It wasn’t… even before the blood-bath lady became its mistress.”
Tali had to ask. “Who was the blood-bath lady?”
“It takes a lot of victims to fill a bathtub with blood. And she bathed daily. Or so the tales say.”
Was this another of Dibly’s macabre jokes? Tali tried not to think about it, but the image of all those people being bled to death each day was not easily banished.
“Puts your little problem into perspective, doesn’t it?” Dibly said with a sidelong glance at Tali. “But Fortress Rutherin is strong; it’s what the chancellor needs. It’s easy to defend, hard to attack and has underground water enough to withstand a year-long siege.”
One wheel crashed into a deep pothole, jerked out of it and fell into another. There came the sharp crack of breaking wood. The wagon tilted sharply to the left, slamming Tali’s camp bed into the left-hand wall.
“Are we being attacked?” she cried.
Dibly tore open the front curtains and was leaning out when there came another crack, from the rear. The left-hand side of the wagon slammed down onto the rocky road, hurling her out, and the wagon bed came to rest at a steep angle. Tali was toppled from the camp bed, which overturned onto her.
Struggling out from under the bed was like climbing a mountain. Her heart was pounding by the time she freed herself. Outside, people were shouting and a rider was galloping towards them. If it was an attack, was she better off inside the wagon or out? Out, she thought. She could not bear to be trapped.
Tali crawled along the sloping bed of the wagon to the curtains, and peered out. “Madam Dibly?”
The old woman lay on the rocky ground, unmoving. There was blood all over her face. Tali slid down, half falling. Both of the left-side wheels lay on the ground. It wasn’t an attack. The first jolt must have broken the front axle of the wagon and then the strain had snapped the rear one.