by Ian Irvine
Tali had her hand over the depression and was preparing to move the bone back into place when the horse whinnied. She went for the knife, which was on the other side of Holm, but Red-whiskers charged from the bushes and kicked it out of her hand. The blackbeard, Crebb, hauled Tali up by the hair, put his arms around her middle from behind and held her in an unbreakable grip.
“Got you!” said Red-whiskers, and punched her in the mouth.
She sagged, staring at him in terror. The lower half of her face was a mass of pain, running all the way up along her jawline to the sides of her skull.
Tali had suffered a number of beatings in Cython, before she had mastered Nurse Bet’s bare-handed art, but she had never experienced anything like the savage glee with which Red-whiskers had attacked her.
He drew back his fist for another blow, then clutched at his side, groaning. His own jaw hung oddly, dislocated when the horse’s shoulder had struck him. His face was a swollen mess and each tortured breath made a bubbling sound in his chest. Had a broken rib punctured a lung? He also had dozens of bloody punctures from the thorn bush, and some were red and shiny.
Red-whiskers twitched, grimaced, shuddered. He was in agony and wanted to inflict as much pain on her. He thumped her again, then clutched at his chest. Strands of pink saliva hung from his gaping mouth. Tali swallowed a mouthful of her own blood, wondering if it would have any healing powers on her.
Red-whiskers spat blood onto the ground and raised his fist for a third blow.
“Enough!” said Crebb. “You’ll kill her.”
“Want to kill the little bitch,” slurred Red-whiskers.
“No! Where do you think I’ve been while you were lazing in the thorn bush?”
“Running for your gutless life. You’re never around when the dirty work needs doing.”
Crebb dropped Tali beside Holm and put a hobnailed boot in the middle of her back. “I can safely leave that to you. Someone has to do the thinking.”
“All right, I’ll bite,” Red-whiskers said sullenly. “Where did you get to?”
For the moment they weren’t looking at Tali. She slid a hand across Holm’s skull and located the depressed fracture. It was a far more difficult healing than fixing his broken nose, and more dangerous, too. If she moved a splinter of bone the wrong way, he could die.
She wasn’t sure she could do it. What if she had judged wrong? No, hesitation would be just as fatal; just do it. Forcing the pain in her mouth and the throb in her jaw into the background, she drew power to ease the cracked skull bone into place.
“Followed their tracks back across the dunes,” said Crebb. “They came from the sea, you moron. Across the mudflats from the iceberg that stranded last night.”
He whistled up the other two horses. They came running, their manes streaming out behind them.
“Who cares where they came from?” Red-whiskers drew back a massive boot, as if to kick Tali in the head. She could see the hobnails in the sole.
Heal, heal! she thought frantically.
Crebb thrust him aside. “Enough! There’s a reward, a big one.”
“Never heard about no reward,” Red-whiskers said sullenly.
“Because you can’t read. There are notices along the road. A big reward for an old man and a young blonde woman who’ve come from the sea.”
“How big?” Red-whiskers’ manner implied a hope that it be not too big, so he could forgo it and get on with his battery.
“Big enough to satisfy both of us — for life.”
Heal, heal! The skull bone was hardly moving at all. Was she doing something wrong? Tali was starting to panic. If she did not succeed in the next minute, it would be too late. Once the villains tied her up there would be nothing she could do. Heal, heal!
Red-whiskers said hopefully, “Don’t suppose the reward is for dead or alive?”
“If they’re dead, our own lives are forfeit,” said Crebb. “They’re wanted alive and unharmed.”
“What for?”
“How would I know?”
“What are you gunna do with your share?”
“Haven’t got it yet.”
“When you do?”
“Head north where there’s no stinking rock rats.”
“They’ll come,” Red-whiskers said gloomily. “Reckon they’ll hold the whole of Hightspall in another month.”
“Reckon they won’t,” said Crebb. “Resistance is building up in the mountains.”
“I didn’t hear that. What’s going on?”
“A bloke called Deadhand. A great warrior — he killed Arkyz Leatherhead in five minutes flat.”
“Arkyz is dead?” said Red-whiskers.
“Deadhand took his head clean off in a single blow and sent it flying thirty feet into a dung heap.”
“Where was this?”
“Some upland fortress in the Nandelochs. Place called Garramide.”
“Is that where you’re heading?”
“My fighting days are over, and my spending days are just beginning. I’ll be heading well past Garramide. Enough talk. Help me get them on the nags.”
CHAPTER 41
Crebb hauled Holm to his feet and held him there, head lolling. Red-whiskers kicked Tali in the kidneys, just for fun. He lifted her up, groaning at the pain in his side, and tossed her over his shoulder. After spitting blood onto the ground, he headed past the horse she thought of as her own, towards the other two horses.
Holm’s right eye opened. His fist shot out and struck Tali’s horse on the inflamed gouges on its left flank. It whinnied shrilly and kicked backwards at Red-whiskers with both hooves.
One hoof struck him on the right hip, which went crack and collapsed under him, spinning him around. The other hoof caught him in the left side, caved his chest in and blasted bloody foam six feet out of his mouth. He was driven backwards, dropping Tali and impaling himself on the thorn bush.
Crebb let Holm go and swung at his face, but the effort had been too much for the old man. His legs crumpled and the blow passed over his head.
Tali’s hand closed around a stone the size of a grapefruit. She hurled it at Crebb’s groin and, from five feet away, she could hardly miss. He doubled over, retching with the pain. She picked up another rock with both hands and knocked him out, then checked on Red-whiskers. He was twitching and shuddering, his malevolent eyes fixed on her, but he could not move. He gave a last shudder, and died.
Tali looked away from the ruined body. “That could have been me,” she said, trembling all over.
“Sorry,” he said in a frail voice. “It was then or never.”
“Well, the horse did hate its master. It did seem to aim for him.”
He did not reply. Holm was swaying back and forth.
“You okay?” It hurt to talk. The lower half of Tali’s face felt like one enormous bruise and her swollen lips were very painful.
“No.” He steadied himself with his arms. “But I’m alive. Thank you.”
“Reckon you can get on a horse?”
“Suppose I’ll have to.”
“We’d better hurry,” she said, glancing at Crebb. “He could come to any time.”
“Tie him up.”
“No rope.”
She retrieved her knife, sheathed it and picked the smallest horse of the three. Holm took hold of the saddle, Tali boosted him from below and, with a lot of effort, got him into the saddle. Crebb groaned and clutched at his groin.
She took hold of the reins of the third horse, tied them to her saddle horn and clambered up like a crab trying to climb a wall.
“Where are we going?” she said.
“East then north.”
She had lost all sense of direction. “Which way would that be?”
He pointed to the right. “Keep going that way ’til you reach a rugged range, then follow it north — which will be on your left. Keep to the wildest country you can find.”
She directed her horse east, up and over a small hill, where she caught a la
st glimpse of the hostile sea, only a mile or two behind. The stranded iceberg was clearly visible and was bound to attract searchers.
A squall swept up from the south, dumping five minutes of heavy rain on them. Lightning flashed once, high up within a cloud; a rumble of thunder shook the ground. The rain died to a steady drizzle. Tali’s stomach rumbled. She pulled her belt in another notch.
“Do you know anything about this fellow they mentioned — Deadhand?”
“Never heard of him,” Holm said faintly. He did not look well.
“What was the name of the place?”
“Garramide.”
“Do you know where it is?”
He did not reply.
“Should we go there? What do you think, Holm?”
“I’m going to have a little rest. Wake me when we get there.”
Tali followed the range north, walking their horses along stream beds and across expanses of flat rock in an effort to disguise their tracks, and at sunset she holed up in a cave in the southern range. After tethering the horses where there was grass and water, and screening the cave entrance with a dense stack of bushes, she lit a small fire, checking twice to make sure no glow could be seen from outside. Holm was still poorly and she had to repeat her healing twice before, finally, he slept soundly.
Having slept so much in the past few days, she was wide awake. It was smoky in the little cave, but pleasantly warm, and for the first time since her escape from Cython she felt safe. No one knew she was here and their trail would be difficult to follow; though, sooner or later, a determined search must locate them. She had to be ready, and it would help if she knew what Lyf was up to.
Her previous seeings had been involuntary — either due to blood loss or to the effects of the heatstone helmet. But once before, when she had been in the Abysm trying to steal his pearl, Tali had seen Lyf at a distance, via magery. Could she use her newly recovered magery to see him again?
It proved easier than she had expected — she saw him the moment she looked. Tali drew back, afraid to go on. Had her unconscious visions of him in his temple created a mental pathway that allowed her to slip straight across? That could be dangerous. Such a pathway might reveal her to him. But she had to take the risk.
“Go through it all again,” said Errek. “In case we’ve missed something.”
Lyf related the tale of how the Five Heroes had betrayed him and Axil Grandys had hacked his feet off with the accursed blade.
“They bundled me up in a rug, disguised me with magery, then rode like fury to the Catacombs of the Kings and walled me in to die,” Lyf concluded.
Why didn’t you fight back, she wondered. You might have been an inexperienced king, but you were also an adept with the greatest magery of all at your disposal. Why didn’t you use it to save yourself?
“And you have no memory of what happened to the key?” said Errek. “None at all?”
“It was in its hiding place,” snapped Lyf. “No one knew it but me, and it’s not there now. It’s not in the temple.”
“Then someone took it — probably Grandys.”
“But he never used king-magery; he never even found where it had gone.”
“Perhaps he took the key when he searched the temple, but did not know what it was.”
“After all this time, we’ll never know.”
“There may be those in Hightspall who would know,” said Errek. “There’s a man outside you need to talk to.”
“Who?”
“The historian mage, Wiven.”
Lyf went to the temple door, unbolted it and said, “Bring him in.”
A little old man was brought in. His dark face was as wrinkled as a prune.
“You are Wiven?” said Lyf, after the guards had gone and closed the door behind them.
“Yes,” he said in a reedy little voice.
“Yes, Lord King!” corrected Errek.
Lyf waved a hand at him, irritably.
“I’m told that few people know more about the history of magery, and the time of Lyf’s death, than you,” said Errek.
“No one knows half as much as I do,” said Wiven. “What do you want?”
“What happened to the contents of the temple after Lyf’s disappearance?”
“It was raided in the night. Everything was taken.”
“Who raided it?” said Lyf.
“Axil Grandys.”
“Why? What was he looking for?”
“No one knows,” said Wiven. “But — ”
“Yes?”
“It was rumoured that he was looking for a talisman.”
“A talisman?” said Lyf. “Why?”
“Grandys’ own magery relied on them. Maloch, for instance, is a great talisman.”
“Did he find one?”
“Since he never found the lost king-magery, it’s assumed he did not.”
“What happened to the contents of my temple?”
“No one knows.”
Lyf recalled the guards. “Take him out. Far enough that you don’t defile the temple.”
The little old man was hauled out. There was a brief scuffle, a reedy cry, then the thump of a blade cleaving a head from a neck. Tali winced.
Lyf closed the door, bolted it and moved well away. “Another dead end.”
“A poor choice of words, in the circumstances,” Errek said drily. He looked around. “What’s that?”
Had she been discovered? Tali broke the link and opened her eyes. So this vital key was definitely gone, probably taken by Grandys, but how could anyone find it after all this time?
Suddenly ravenous, she went through Holm’s pack, discovered a map which she put aside for later, then took out their remaining food — a chunk of fatty bacon, an onion, a couple of cups of oatmeal and some unidentifiable pieces of dried fruit. Tali had never cooked a meal but how difficult could it be? She chopped everything into small pieces, put it in the pan with some water and set it on the fire.
“I hope you’ve got an appetite,” she said, on waking Holm an hour later. “This is the last of the food.”
Holm eyed the grey, oily mess without enthusiasm. “What is it?”
“I’m calling it stew.”
“What’s in it?”
“All we had of everything.”
“Boiled?” he cried. “Even the bacon?”
“Um,” said Tali. “Isn’t that how you do it?”
He sighed and took a cautious spoonful. “Oh, well, I dare say it’ll be nourishing.”
“Isn’t that what people say when the food is horrible?”
“Did I say that?” he said with an innocent twinkle. He tasted, tasted again. “It’s not too bad… considering. Didn’t your mother teach you to cook?”
“In Cython, the kitchen slaves do all the cooking.”
They finished their stew in a companionable silence. The fire died low. She put more wood on.
“What now?” said Holm.
She debated whether or not to tell him about her seeing of Lyf and Errek, but decided to put it off a bit longer. “Er… about my magery?”
“Yes?”
“Have I made my choice? Between healing and destruction, I mean?”
“By healing me?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t think so. The choice can’t be any little old thing.”
“I wouldn’t call healing you a little old thing,” she exclaimed.
“Neither would I, but I’m biased. Here’s how the king’s choice used to work, according to what I’ve read in the history books. You have to choose either to do a great healing, such as saving a life that could not be saved any other way. Or a great destruction — taking someone’s life with magery, for instance, or destroying something vast, valuable or vital.”
“I did save your life.”
“From the thugs, not the head injury.” He felt it carefully, wincing.
“So if you’re right, I still have the option,” she said quietly. It came as a great relief, though s
he could not have said why.
“Perhaps it’s just as well,” said Holm, “since you’re the one. Lyf’s your great enemy, and you’re his. If he’s to restore the ancient realm of Cythe, or if you’re to rescue the Pale, sooner or later the battle has to be fought.”
“The later the better, as far as I’m concerned,” said Tali.
“And the sooner the better for him. He’ll be planning to take you on the moment he finds you, so you’ve got to be ready.”
“Um,” said Tali, “he may already have found me. Or at least, seen me.”
“What have you done now?”
She told him about her spying mission, and what she had seen and heard.
“He had the mage put to death at once, you say?”
“Yes,” said Tali.
“So the secret of the lost key is so vital that he couldn’t allow anyone to discover what questions he’d asked.” Holm picked up his stew bowl and scraped the sides. “I wish you’d waited until I was awake.”
“Sorry.”
“But it has told us one thing,” said Holm.
“What’s that?”
“The key he’s looking for is the key to king-magery. But what is it? Is it a physical key? A talisman? A document? A spell?”
“Judging by Lyf’s reaction to the word it wasn’t a talisman. And whatever it was, Grandys probably took it.”
“Though if he did, presumably he couldn’t get it to work — or didn’t recognise it as the key.”
“Since we don’t know where it is now, or even if it still exists, it doesn’t help us.”
“I have an idea about that,” said Holm.
“Really?”
“I was fascinated by Grandys at one stage, when I was young and proud and arrogant. I spent a couple of months reading his papers and studying his artefacts, and after that I didn’t want to be like him at all. Not long afterwards I discovered… that I didn’t want to be like me, either.”
What could he mean? His eyes gave nothing away. “Do you want to tell — ?”