by Ian Irvine
Glynnie was already there, changing the dressings on the man with the amputated arm. There were shadows under her eyes and she looked as though she’d had no more sleep than Rix, but she was smiling at the soldier, trying to be cheerful. Despite the pain, he was smiling back. She’s done great good here this night, thought Rix.
All the blood and mess had been cleaned away, and so had the amputated limbs and Droag’s body. “How are we doing?” Rix said quietly.
“We lost two in the night. Scanzi of a head wound — he never came to, just slipped away — and Pentine with that terrible gash across the belly. I never held any hope for him… but still…”
“He was a decent man, a widower with two little kids.”
“And now they’ve got no one.”
“They’ll have a home here as long as I’m in charge,” said Rix.
Dawn was breaking outside, and he was doing the rounds of the wounded, speaking to all those who were awake, when a rosy-cheeked lad came running in, so swathed in coats that he looked like a ball on legs. “Lord, er, Rixium?”
“Yes, lad? You’re Thom, aren’t you? How’s your hand?”
“Can’t even see where the splinter was, Lord Deadhand.” Thom gazed at Glynnie, worshipfully, then turned back to Rix. “Sergeant Nuddell bids you come at once.”
Glynnie swung around, staring at Thom.
“Bad news?” said Rix. “They’re not attacking again?”
“Didn’t say.”
“What are you doing up so early, lad?” said Rix as he accompanied Thom back to the watchtower. Rix wiped his eyes. Even in the sheltered yard the wind was so bitter that his eyes were watering and the tears freezing on his cheeks.
“Cel-celebrating your great victory,” said the boy, skipping along.
“We haven’t won yet.”
“But we’re going to.”
Nuddell met them at the top of the steps. “You’ll want to see this,” he said, heading across to the outer wall. Rix followed, impatiently, and looked over.
“Can I see?” said Thom. “Can I see?”
Rix picked the boy up and perched him on his right shoulder.
Thom hooted and waved his fists. “They’re running, the cowardly dogs!”
The attacking force was halfway across the plateau, heading for the escarpment and the road down. More than twenty mounds lay in the snow where their camp had been, and many more below the parts of the wall Rix could see from here.
“Whatever they are, Thom, they’re not cowards,” said Rix. “But they suffered a bitter defeat at the wall yesterday, and last night was a killing cold that would have drained them to the dregs. Few men would be in any condition to fight today, and if they stayed, tonight will be even colder. Off you go.”
He walked the length of the wall, speaking to each of the guards and making sure they were up to the job, then headed down to spread the good news, though by the time he was inside the whole fortress knew it.
“They lost a hundred and sixty-six dead, plus many wounded,” said Rix to the assembled people. “Such a defeat that they could hardly have attacked again even without the blizzard. They won’t be back until the weather improves. Today will be a holiday — ”
He paused until the cheering died down. “But after that, we can’t rest until we’ve strengthened Garramide to hold out twice that number.”
One after another, the people of Garramide came up to shake Rix’s hand and thank him personally. Protest all he might that it was a team effort, no one would listen. He had saved them and they would never forget it.
“That was mightily well done, Rixium,” said Swelt, last of all. “I’ve written half a dozen dispatches and I’ll send them out by carrier hawk within the hour, to the six corners of Hightspall.”
“In this weather?” said Rix.
“Carrier hawks fly in any weather, and this is news that can’t wait. Our first true victory over the enemy.”
“Well, all right, though it seems a trifle boastful, since the weather — ”
“It’s a famous victory. It proves the enemy can be beaten, and it’ll bring hope to our oppressed people wherever they are. And encourage other leaders to step forward, all over the land.”
“It might also encourage Lyf to send a full army against us,” said Rix.
CHAPTER 50
Tali scrambled back to the ladder and up six rungs to the seventh level, which was empty. Where was everyone?
“Holm?” she yelled, her voice going shrill. “Where are you? The top of the spike is on fire.”
“I’m here!” Holm called from below. “Come down.”
She looked down. “Is Rezire there?”
“No, he went up.”
“I’ve got to warn him.”
“You already did.”
“Not about the fire.”
“Make it quick!”
Tali stood there. “I took too long. I might have stopped them.”
“All twenty-four gauntlings? When all the world’s magery is failing? You take too much on yourself.”
“I was distracted, and by the time I’d gathered enough magery to attack, it was too late. I’ve got to warn everyone.”
“Then get a move on! I’ll tell the people down below.”
Tali scrambled up the ladder to the eighth level and screamed, “Rezire! Fire! Fire!”
He did not answer. She looked up the series of ladders, through level after level, hole after hole until she could no longer separate them. It was another eight hundred feet to the top. Tali was a lot stronger than she had been a week ago, but she could not climb all that way.
However the shape of the chambers focused sound upwards, and if she shouted loudly enough it would be heard many levels up. If the librarians and curators on each level repeated the warning, it would pass from the bottom of the tower to the top in a minute or two.
“Fire!” she screamed. “The top of the tower is on fire. Get out now!”
A gowned curator, a little, bald gnome of a man, looked down from the ninth level. “Did you call?”
“Fire, you bloody moron. The top level is on fire. Get out now.”
He pursed his lips. “There’s no excuse for rudeness. Good manners cost nothing, girlie.”
“If you don’t get out, you’re going to burn to death. Warn the people above.”
He looked up. “I don’t see any fire.”
“Hurry, please.”
He began to replace books on the shelves as though he had hours. What was the matter with these people? They seemed to live in another world.
Was there time enough to get everyone out? Surely fire would not burn down nearly as quickly as it would go up. Each level would have to catch alight, all the way down, and desperate people could scramble down faster than that.
“Tali?” yelled Holm. “Come down.”
She hesitated on the ladder. Had she done enough? No; she had to make up for her failure with the gauntlings. She was climbing up to the ninth level, slowly and wearily, when a hot red dot blossomed an impossible distance above her — fire seen through a succession of ladder holes.
Then a slightly larger dot.
“Tali!” Holm said urgently.
“Yes?” Her voice had a tremor.
“There’s nothing more you can do.”
She looked up, looked down. With all that magery at her disposal, she must be able to do something. But what? She did not know any spell that would answer in this situation.
“Tali, get down now!”
She held on with her left hand, extended her right up towards the distant red dot, and drew power. Her head throbbed.
The ladder shook. Holm was scrambling up it. He came around the other side, level with her.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“Trying to hold back the fire.”
“Do you know how to stop fire with magery?”
“No, but — ”
“It’s one of the most difficult of all spells. I’ve hea
rd of master magians who have spent decades trying to master it — and still failed.”
“If I’d stopped the gauntlings — ”
Holm let out an inarticulate cry, then held up his right fist in front of her face. “See this?” he said furiously.
The white scars across his knuckles stood out lividly. “Yes.”
“If you don’t go down right now, I’m going to knock you out and carry you down over my shoulder. Of course, I’m an old man, so I’ll probably fall off the ladder and break my neck, but — ”
“All right,” she said quietly. “I’ll go. After you.”
“You first. I don’t trust you.”
She looked up. Whoomph! A slightly larger dot of red appeared. Another floor ablaze.
“Go!” cried Holm, and she could hear the fear in his voice.
She scrambled down the rungs. He swung around to her side and followed, shaking the ladder in his haste.
“Faster, Tali.”
Her knees were already wobbly. “I can’t go any faster. I’ll fall.”
“Better you fall than the fire catches you.”
She tried to hurry but her foot slipped. Tali swung by her hands for a few seconds, her heart missing several beats. The holes were directly above one another — she could plunge all the way down, a hundred and eighty feet. She felt for the rungs, settled. Sweat was running down her face.
“Come on!” said Holm.
The red dot was much larger now. Whoomph! Then again, only seconds later.
She reached the bottom of the ladder and scrambled onto the next one down. “How many levels to go?” she gasped.
“Six.”
“I don’t think we’re going to make it. And what if the fire weakens the spike above us? The floors could fall down on our heads.”
“It’ll be a quicker way to go than burning to death.”
They made it down to the sixth level. Tali looked across the room and saw a curator polishing an orb on a stand.
“Get out!” she screamed. “Tirnan Twil is on fire.”
The man did not look up. “Fire or no fire, our work must be done.”
“But…” She looked up desperately. “Holm, tell them.”
“I have told them, but this is the only life they’ve ever known. We’ve done all we can.”
“I was wrong about the fire,” said Tali, who could feel the heat radiation on the top of her head now. “It’s coming faster than we can climb down.”
“You talk too much,” panted Holm.
“And I’m holding you up,” she said. “Sorry.”
He grunted.
She shot down the next ladder and onto the one after that. She tried to guess how far up the fire was. Surely only ten or twelve levels. Down she hurtled, her sweat-drenched palms slipping on the rungs. Not far to go now.
She reached the bottom, looked up, and choked. There was no sign of Holm.
“Holm, where are you?”
No answer. “Holm?”
She cursed and headed up again, her heart crashing violently. What had happened to him? Had he fallen backwards off the ladder, out of sight?
He wasn’t on the second level, the third or fourth or fifth. Pain spread through her chest. He had vanished. She forced herself up towards the sixth, where she had last seen him. Her legs were so wobbly that they would barely support her.
Whoomph!
There was smoke on this level now, stinging her eyes and blinding her with tears. But he wasn’t here either. She scrabbled up to the seventh, the portrait gallery.
“Holm?” she said, turning around. There he was, hardly visible through the swirling smoke. “What are you doing?” she screamed.
“I remembered something.”
Whoomph! Whoomph!
A pressure wave sent an incandescent blast of heat down at them. That’s why it’s burning down so fast, she thought. That’s why none of the librarians have made it down the ladders. And if it catches us -
Holm sprang down, stuffing something into his coat.
“What’s that?” said Tali.
“There isn’t time to talk about it.”
“You’re a fine one to lecture me,” cried Tali, fear choking her. “Go down!”
He rattled down the ladder and she followed. When they reached the bottom, the fire was only three levels above. A blistering wind was driven down past them, and on it she could smell burning hair and other unpleasant things. There was no smoke down here, but it was a struggle to breathe nonetheless; the air did not seem to be giving her what she needed.
She looked around frantically. “Which way did we come in?” she said, panting.
“That way.” He indicated a closed door. He was breathing heavily too. “But it’s not the way we’re going out.”
“Why not?”
“Do you have to argue every bloody point? Do what I say for once.”
He limped to the great door on the other side. It was locked. Whoomph!
“Open it,” said Holm, and stepped aside.
“How?”
“Use your damned magery. As much raw power as you’ve got. No subtlety is required.”
She extended her hand, drew from the pearl and, with a stone-rending boom, the door tore off its hinges and was blasted outwards. It went tumbling across the ravine, to crash into the yellow cliff a hundred yards away.
“Perhaps a hint of subtlety,” smiled Holm.
A cold wind rushed in and up the ladder. The fires above glowed red, then blue.
Suddenly there was flame all around, consuming the air, making it impossible to breathe. Holm caught Tali’s hand, dragging her outside. It was raining heavily and the air was thick with smoke. The arch stretched before them, across to a ledge. They ran, but were only halfway across when, with a Whoomph! Whoomph! Whoomph! fire burst out the door, straight at them.
Tali felt the tips of her hair shrivelling, the fur on the collar of her coat singeing. There came a blast of heat on her exposed skin, then she was pounding away, hauling Holm behind her.
She skidded off the end of the arch, holding her hands out to prevent herself from crashing into the cut-away cliff, then ducked below the level of the arch. Flames roared overhead for a minute or two, bouncing off the cliff in all directions. She was sweltering in her heavy clothes. She sucked at the hot air but still felt suffocated.
Then it was gone into nothing. It might never have been there, save that the yellow cliff was steaming and the moss in the cracks had been charred away. Tali stood up unsteadily and looked back.
Orange flames were visible through the windows of Tirnan Twil, all the way up. Some of the thick panes had burst and flames were licking out, along with yellow, black and brown smoke. The golden stone around the broken windows was already smirched by tarry smoke stains.
Smoke whirled about the spike; rain hissed off the hot stone. The whole structure seemed to shiver slightly, then settle, and for a long moment Tali thought it was going to collapse into the abyss, but it held.
“I almost wish it had fallen,” she said quietly. “Apart from the smoke stains, it looks unharmed.”
“Just as it ever was,” said Holm.
“And even the smoke stains will wash away in time.”
“I know what you mean. It doesn’t seem right that all those people, and everything they looked after so carefully for so long, should have been destroyed…”
“Yet the vainglorious shell remains, untouched. Why didn’t they run?” said Tali. Her insides were aching, burning.
“I think some, like Rezire, had invested so much of their lives in Tirnan Twil that they couldn’t bear to leave, even in its death agony. Like a captain going down with his ship, perhaps.”
“What about the others?”
“It had stood for two millennia, unchanged, untouched. Perhaps the idea of it being destroyed was so preposterous that they could not take it in. Life in Tirnan Twil was slow, contemplative, deliberate.”
“I tried to warn them.”
&
nbsp; “You did everything you could. And at the end, the fire came very fast. Much faster than I expected. By the time they realised how bad it was, it would have been on them.”
“It must be a terrible thing, being burned to death.” She shuddered violently.
“I think most would have suffocated,” he said gently.
“Why do you say that?”
“Remember how hard it was to breathe at the bottom? The burnt air sinks. I doubt they suffered much.”
“But still…”
“Not the way I would choose to go.”
He put an arm around her shoulders. She looked back at Tirnan Twil, one last time.
“As they said, a monument to eternity.”
CHAPTER 51
“Was blowing the door off a great destruction?” said Tali.
The smoke was thickening, whirling and tumbling in the updrafts created by the ravine. She could hardly see Tirnan Twil now.
“Did it kill anyone, or destroy something vast or vital?”
“No.”
“Then the answer is no.” He looked down the ravine, then up. “Can you hear them?”
“The people inside?” she whispered, shivering.
“No, the gauntlings.”
It was hard to tell over the roar and crackle of the fire, the wind whistling along the gorge, and the pattering rain.
Kaark! Kaark!
“They’ll come after us, won’t they?”
“Once the smoke clears, they’ll come down to check. With the gusting winds around here, it’d be too dangerous right now.” He glanced at the sky. “Not much daylight left, which is good. Though it means…” He gave her a sympathetic smile.
“What now?” she groaned.
“We’ll have to walk the cliff path out — the really dangerous one — in darkness.”
“What do you mean the really dangerous one? How could it be worse than the one we came in on?”
“It’s worse.” He was smirking.
Tali could not smile. The destruction of Tirnan Twil had burned all humour out of her.
“However I do know a secret way out,” said Holm. “If we can get out of sight we can lose them in the night.”
“Luck isn’t something we’ve had much of, lately.”