Rebellion ttr-2

by Ian Irvine

  She pointed her right hand at the wall.

  “Not there,” Holm said hastily. “You might bring a hundred tons of iceberg down on our heads.”

  She went to the entrance and pointed at the edge, down near the waterline.

  Ice, break!

  Three feet of iceberg shattered and cascaded into the water.

  “Power and control,” said Holm. “I’m impressed. How are you feeling?”

  “My head hurts, though not as badly as I would have expected.” She shivered.

  Tali went inside and pulled her coat around her.

  “Well, you can’t expect miracles.”

  “What was the worrying question?”

  “What?”

  “You said the link between heatstone, the pearls and magery raised a worrying question.”

  He frowned. “King-magery was only ever used by the kings — and ruling queens — of Cythe. And only for healing the wounded land and people.”

  “Why is that worrying?”

  “On becoming king, every Cythian king of old made the choice to use the great power of king-magery only for healing, not for destruction — because to do otherwise would be disastrous.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “I told you, I’ve always been fascinated by both history and magery. Each king had to affirm his choice, for healing, in a great public ceremony.”

  “What’s the worrying bit?”

  “Your magery comes from heatstone, which formed from king-magery. If you use magery for purposes inimical to healing, it’s likely to damage your ability to heal.”

  “I wasn’t planning on doing much healing,” said Tali.

  “That’s all right then,” said Holm.

  “Why?”

  “I believe that, with pearl magery, you can be a destroyer or a healer, but not both. You have to choose — then keep to that choice — forever.”

  CHAPTER 36

  The whole of Palace Ricinus had been torn down, save for Rix’s leaning tower. The rubble had been cleared away and the land dug deep to expose the foundations of the kings’ palace that had stood here in ancient Cythe, when the royal city had been called Lucidand. Lyf had sketched the great buildings of the city as he remembered them before the First Fleet came, and given the sketches to his architects. Soon he would make a start on the restoration.

  “This is an unhealthy obsession, Lyf,” the shades of his ancestors kept telling him. “Our past means nothing to your people any more.”

  There were a hundred and six of these shades, and each, in life, had been one of the greater kings or ruling queens of old Cythe. Lyf had created them, his ancestor gallery as he liked to think of them, during his long exile as a wrythen. For centuries he had relied on them for advice and support, though latterly their advice had mostly been contrary, and he was fed up with it.

  “It does, it does,” said Lyf.

  “No, it doesn’t,” said Bloody Herrie, the angriest and most contrary shade of them all. He rubbed his red, hacked throat. “The remnants of old Cythe were extinguished when our degrado camps were burned by the enemy and you allowed the last of our people to die.”

  “Not the last — just the last of the adult degradoes. They were fatally corrupted. We had to start again, with the children. The untainted ones.”

  “Your aim may have been noble, but in doing so you wiped our past clean. You took those children and remade our people from them, but they have no history save the one you fabricated for them, in your blasphemous Solaces. Why should any of this matter to them? Let Cythe go, Lyf.”

  “I can’t!” he cried.

  The kings’ temple had been restored to its simple, ancient beauty. Yet, though every flagstone had been torn up, cleaned, and the soil for a yard beneath it had been removed and replaced, still the foul odour lingered.

  But all would be well, in time. After the war had been won Lyf would use king-magery to heal his land and his troubled people.

  “I’ll have the daily war report,” he said to his waiting generals.

  “The chancellor is playing at war in the south-west,” said General Hramm, “but he’s plagued by self-doubt and struggling to make alliances. We can discount him.”

  “I never discount an enemy until his head is impaled on a pole,” said Lyf. “The chancellor may be down, but he’s a wily, formidable foe. He may be making his case look worse than it is to gull us. Redouble the watch. Urge our saboteurs and insurrectionists to greater efforts. Undermine him every way we can.”

  “It will be done, Lord King. In the north-west, there have been a number of skirmishes north of Bledd. Though none to trouble us.”

  “What about the hunt for the slave, Tali, and my master pearl? Surely you have some good news there?”

  General Hramm looked all around the room.

  “Well?” said Lyf.

  It burst out. “Tali escaped from Fortress Rutherin with a man called Holm. They were pursued out to sea but escaped again, sinking most of the pursuing boats. Lizue found them in the Southern Strait and attempted to take Tali’s head in a bag — ”

  “Well?” said Lyf.

  “Tali beat Lizue in combat, threw her overboard, and she was eaten by a shark.”

  Lyf reeled. “Not Lizue! She was my best. How do you know this?”

  “Her gauntling came back, eventually…”

  “Yes? Go on.”

  “The bond between gauntling and rider is strong, Lord King, and when she died in so bloody a way, the balance of its mind was broken. It turned renegade and dropped an oil bombast onto Holm’s boat. It burned and sank.”

  “It sank?” Lyf stared into empty space. Could two thousand years of planning be defeated by the malice of a deranged shifter? He had created shifters specifically to terrorise the enemy and the irony was too painful to contemplate. “What about Tali?”

  “Her fate isn’t known. The gauntling was badly injured by a crossbow bolt, and fled. I’m sorry, Lord King. The treacherous beast will be put down once it’s found, of course.”

  Lyf clacked back and forth on his crutches, struggling to breathe, then whirled and stalked to the pearls. Taking them in his hand, he sent out the call. It was not answered, but neither did he feel the painful emptiness that would signify the master pearl had been destroyed.

  “Don’t put the beast down. I don’t believe the pearl has been lost. Identify the location, then redouble the search where the boat sank, and for a hundred miles around.”

  “Yes, Lord King. We’ll have to be more careful with gauntlings in future.”

  “They’re a flawed creation,” said Lyf. “The intelligence that makes them such useful spies also gives them less desirable attributes. They’re headstrong, vengeful, malicious…”

  “And always looking to break our control. I recommend that you put them all down, Lord King.”

  “Once the master pearl has been found and the war won, I will. Until that time, they’re the only aerial spies I have, and I can’t do without them.”

  Lyf floated up into the air, as if the extra height could enable his inner eye to see further, but it did not. He descended to the floor. “What else?”

  “Lord King,” said General Hramm, with a show of reluctance, “the ice grows ever closer, and the weather colder. With so many prisoners to feed, it will be a struggle to survive the winter.”

  “There is a solution,” Lyf said softly.

  “Not one that is palatable to your people, Lord King. As you know, for some time there has been muttering about the senseless bloodshed and wanton destruction.”

  “Very well,” snapped Lyf. “A wise king listens to the voice of his people. What are they saying?”

  “That we’ve done enough. That we should negotiate for peace. And coincidentally, the chancellor has sent a second lot of envoys.”

  “I know,” said Lyf. “They’ve been waiting for three days, trying to see me, and I’ve been refusing them.”

  “It never hurts to talk, Lord King. Th
ey’re bound to reveal more than you will.”

  “I suppose so. Send them in. But I’ll never trust the chancellor. And I’m making no concessions, nor giving back any territory.”

  After seeing the envoys, he called Hramm back to complete the war report.

  “What’s the situation in the north-east?”

  “Mostly quiet, but underneath, rebellion seethes,” said Hramm. “As you know, there are many Herovian manors in that area.”

  “That irks me,” said Lyf. “Have we the strength to subdue the region?”

  “It would take another two armies. The mountains are difficult to fight in, the manors isolated and well fortified, the people of a rebellious disposition — and the weather very bad.”

  “Are they preparing for war?”

  “Not that we know, save for the place where your most bitter enemy, Deadhand, has taken refuge.”

  “Does this place have a name?”

  “Garramide. And he has the sword, Maloch, with him.”

  Lyf let out a hiss. “How did you find him?”

  “A lord in our pay brought news of a planned raid on our garrison at Jadgery. Our troops were waiting. They crushed the attack and followed the tracks of the survivors. Deadhand — Lord Rixium — was their leader.”

  “Garramide,” said Lyf. “Do I know it?”

  “The manor of Wendand Nil stood there in your time — ”

  “My time? Now is my time.”

  “When you were king of all Cythe, my king,” Hramm said hastily. “It was torn down, and Garramide built in its place by Axil Grandys for his bastard daughter. It’s been a Herovian outpost ever since.”

  “Hand-pick a force, the best we have. Crush Garramide and raze it.”

  “Yes, Lord King,” said Hramm.

  “Then bring me the sword, and Deadhand’s hands — and his head, impaled on a spike.”

  CHAPTER 37

  The whole of Garramide was waiting in the main courtyard when Rix rode in with Nuddell and the twenty riderless horses, though they weren’t waiting for news. The survivors of the raid had told the bitter tale an hour ago.

  “What went wrong?” said Swelt, gnawing at a blood sausage.

  “Bedderlees betrayed us. The enemy knew when we were coming and how we planned to attack. They were waiting inside the gate.”

  “And they’ll follow you back,” said Porfry, colourless and dry as dust. “For nineteen hundred years Garramide has been unassailed. Now, in one reckless night, you’ve destroyed it, Deadhand.”

  “Doom, doom on us all,” howled the witch-woman, Astatin.

  Blathy stared at Rix, arms folded over her bosom. No doubt comparing him to Leatherhead, who had never been known to fail in a raid.

  “When the enemy attacks, hundreds of us are going to die,” said Porfry.

  No one felt his failure more keenly than Rix, but he was the lord and had to protect morale. “The doom of this fortress was set in ancient times, when Axil Grandys tore down the Cythian manor that once stood here and built Garramide in its place.”

  “How dare you blame our noblest ancestor for your failings!”

  “The past has created the present, every bit of it — ” Rix broke off, reflecting wryly that Tobry had not long ago made the same point to him. “As soon as the centre is secure, Lyf will attack the provinces. Garramide would have been high on his list whether I came here or not.”

  “It’s higher now,” Porfry said mulishly.

  “Our country is being torn apart by a brutal enemy, Porfry, and if we don’t fight for it we’re going to lose it. Would you have me hide like a coward?”

  “Enough, Porfry,” snapped Swelt. “A garrison that size can’t attack a mighty fortress like Garramide. Lyf will have to send a force from Caulderon — if it isn’t already on its way.”

  “The result is the same,” said Porfry, shooting Swelt a hostile glance.

  “And you’re a whining coward who wouldn’t fight to save your own mother!”

  “I think that’ll do,” said Rix. “Let’s go in.”

  “Besides,” Swelt went on, “Garramide is the greatest surviving Herovian manor, built by Axil Grandys. And Maloch — the weapon Lyf fears more than any other — lay hidden here for the next nineteen centuries. Lyf’s attention would have turned to us sooner, not later.”

  Most of the servants had gone inside, but a small group lingered, shooting Rix dark looks, and Blathy was among them. He could see the fierce joy in her dark eyes.

  Swelt turned to Rix and said quietly, “Don’t take any notice of that rabble. The servants that count aren’t too upset.”

  “Why not?”

  “Surely that’s obvious?”

  “Enlighten me.”

  “The dead men were the worst of Leatherhead’s thugs and they treated the servants badly. They won’t shed any tears.”

  “It doesn’t lessen my failure.”

  “But it will reduce the consequences. I’ll send messengers to every hut and steading on the plateau, telling them to be ready to bring their people and livestock to Garramide. We’ve got to get ready for a siege.”

  “Thank you, Swelt,” said Rix. He had one ally in Garramide, at least.

  Glynnie was also watching him but her eyes were hooded and he could not tell what she was thinking. She had a livid mark on her right cheek, and her arms and legs were covered in bruises.

  She had always been his stoutest defender, and look how he had repaid her.

  What have I done? Rix thought. And how am I ever going to fix it?

  The fire in his suite was blazing and the room was full of welcoming steam. Rix had never been more glad to see it. He stripped off his filthy, bloodstained garments and collapsed into the bath that had been drawn for him. He was pouring a dipper of water over his head when the latch on the outside door clicked.

  He started up, water going everywhere, and was reaching for Maloch when Glynnie came through the inner door with an armload of clean clothes. She yelped and looked away. He sat down in the tub, hastily.

  “You’re hurt, Lord Deadhand.” It sounded like an accusation.

  “Just scratches.”

  She approached the tub, inspected his chest, arms and back. Glynnie was trying to look like an impassive servant, but she was trembling. She put down his clothes.

  “They look bad. Let me tend — ”

  It wasn’t right that she should be looking after him when he had done her such wrong. “No!” he said, more harshly than he had intended. “It’s nothing. I can do it.”

  “You rob me of every little thing we had together,” she said. “You must really hate me.”

  “I don’t! I care — ”

  She went out as quietly as she had entered.

  Rix flopped back in the tub. What could he do for her? He couldn’t give her a new role — that would only make her position worse, and heighten the rumours that she was his lover.

  As he sat there, brooding, an image of the raid came to mind, a moment he had not seen but had thought about constantly on the long ride home. Fifteen men climbing over the gate in the dark, only to have their throats slit as they reached the ground on the other side. Many had been thugs, even brutes, but Rix had trained and fought with them, and none of them had been wholly bad. They had all cared about someone, or something.

  Fifteen fathers, sons or brothers who would never come home to their weeping womenfolk, their grieving fathers, their families who might now starve in this most bitter of all winters. And he had given the order that had sent them to their deaths.

  It was an inevitable consequence of being a leader in wartime. The chancellor’s orders had led to tens of thousands of deaths — soldiers and civilians — and perhaps, after a while, the body count grew so high that one became numb to it. Rix had not reached that stage. He could see all their faces.

  Hours later he was still sitting in the icy tub when Glynnie reappeared, wringing her small hands.

  “What are you doing?” she said softly.<
br />
  “Counting my failures and reckoning up the toll. Trying to make peace with all those men I sent to their deaths.”

  “Well, stop!”

  “The faces won’t go away.”

  “They went willingly — for plunder.” She thumped him on the shoulder, hard. “Get out.”

  “What?” he said dazedly.

  “Get out of the tub.”

  “Why?”

  “I’ve got to tend to your wounds.”

  “They don’t matter. Nothing matters.”

  She slapped him across the face, a stinging blow with all her strength behind it. “Get. Out!”

  He looked up at her, rubbing his cheek. “What was that for?”

  “I liked you better as a good man who had failed than I do you wallowing in self-pity, Lord.”

  “I’m not wallowing…” But he was.

  “Get up and do something about your problems.”

  She fetched the red towel and stood by, waiting.

  He crouched in the icy bath. “I’ll get out when you leave.”

  “I’m not a real person, just a maidservant here to attend your needs.”

  Rix did not have the energy to fight her. He rose from the tub and allowed her to dry him, which she did with a servant’s thoroughness. Her cheeks were pink when she finished. He slipped into the fur-lined robe she held out for him.

  “On the bed,” she said.

  He blinked. “I beg your pardon?”

  Her flush deepened. “The enemy are going to attack us, aren’t they?”

  “Yes.”

  “How soon?”

  “Too soon.”

  “Then you’ve got to be in a fit state to take charge of the defences.”

  She wrenched the robe down over his shoulders, slapped a handful of some foul-smelling paste into the long gash down his upper arm, and rubbed it in with furious strokes.

  Glynnie climbed onto the high bed and loomed over him, using her weight to force the paste deep into a puncture wound in his upper chest, then a slash between his ribs, jamming it into the inflamed area with her thumbs. He bit back a groan.

  “Something the matter?” said Glynnie.