by Ian Irvine
“Tali?” he said, his voice the barest croak. “Need my potion, now.”
If he could not take it in the next few minutes, he would have a full-blown attack of shifter madness. And she had it in her pack.
Tali checked on the map to make sure of the quickest route, then turned and ran, along the main tunnel and around a corner. Three passages opened up before her. She took the left one and was racing along it when she realised that she had never been this way before; this passage had not been here when she was a slave. But the floor was worn, and there was dust on the wall carvings, so it wasn’t newly built, either.
She stopped. This wasn’t right. Many parts of Cython were forbidden to the Pale, but how had she got into one? As she turned back, a door slid across ahead of her, sealing the passage. She turned again and her nemesis stood there.
“You fell into my trap,” said Lyf.
CHAPTER 97
“I lured you to Cython with a lie,” said Lyf, smiling. He wore boots and still supported himself on crutches, though he wasn’t holding them — they were moving of their own accord.
“W-what?” Tali felt numb; she couldn’t think.
“I never planned to put the Pale to death. Do you really think I’m such a monster as to repay Hightspall’s genocide with my own?”
She didn’t reply. Yes, she thought. I think you are such a monster.
“But now your people have rebelled and attacked their lawful masters,” he went on, “what can my people do but cut them down — in self-defence?”
Tali’s knees wobbled. She had given him the justification he needed, and this was his revenge for what she had done to him in the murder cellar. She had doomed the people she had come here to save.
“You manipulated me all along,” she whispered. “Your revenge must be sweet indeed.”
He clunked towards her. “This isn’t revenge, it’s war, and I didn’t incite your people to rebel and attack their lawful masters. You did!”
“You’re not our lawful masters,” she said dully. “You enslaved us.”
“Slavery is perfectly legal.”
“Not in my country.”
“Ah, but you aren’t in your country, are you? You’re in mine, the Pale too, and my laws apply.”
In the distance she could hear the clash of swords, an occasional thump as a piece of heatstone went off, and the distinctive, high-voiced cries of her people. Death cries. “How long have I been your dupe?”
“I discovered that you were spying on me a few weeks ago,” said Lyf.
“And you’ve been feeding me lies ever since.”
“Didn’t you wonder that, every time you spied on me, I was talking about the same thing?”
“The key to king-magery.” What a fool she’d been to think she could outwit Lyf.
“Just so. I needed the master pearl to lead me to the key, but you were too well guarded. So why not put the idea into your head — perhaps you would find the key for me.”
“It wasn’t at Tirnan Twil.”
He came forwards again, shrugged. “No matter. I’ve had a better idea.”
The piece of heatstone in her loincloth pouch was hot against her belly. She felt its square outline through the fabric. Was there a way to use it?
“How did you know?” she said limply.
“I’ve been aware of your blood oath for some time. It showed me the way to lure you here, and the last time you spied on me I managed to overhear you, briefly.”
“So that’s what the leaf of the iron book was all about — to lure me here like the fool I am.”
“There’s no shame in being fooled by me.” Lyf was only a few feet away. Within striking distance.
What was his weakness? Magery might be weakening everywhere, but here in his realm, so close to the vast heatstone deposit that held his lost king-magery, his gift was bound to be stronger than hers.
She could not harm him with heatstone, either. In the caverns, when she had broken that little heatstone, it had empowered him. What about his legs? Since he still used crutches, she assumed that he had not found a way to restore his amputated feet.
His eyes narrowed; he was about to attack. Tali dived, not at him but for the left-hand crutch, which supported his most damaged leg. She caught hold of it and wrenched. He teetered but it didn’t come free — it was bound to him with magery. She landed on her back, kicked upwards with both legs at the other crutch and sent it flying.
As Lyf crashed to the floor, he reached out and called the crutch to him; he was already rising as it came skidding across the stone. Tali couldn’t fight him, he was too strong. She turned and bolted down the dimly lit tunnel.
Shortly she reached an intersection. She had planned to go left and circle around to get back to the Pale, but the left passage was blocked. She went right, loping along, trying to get ahead. The next passage to the left was also blocked, and so was the way directly ahead.
He seemed to be driving her to the right, but why? What was down that way? The whole world was silent now, save for the audible thumping of her heart. She stopped, checked the passage each way, then located herself with the map. She wasn’t far from the heatstone mine, though this passage approached it from an unfamiliar direction. Was he driving her that way, deliberately exposing her to the heatstone that would hurt her and strengthen him?
The mage glass revealed fighting all around the toadstool grottoes and the drive down to the chymical level. The Pale still had not broken through and now they appeared to be trapped; the enemy were advancing along the main tunnel from either direction. She put map and glass in her pack and stumbled on.
Tali didn’t know this passage, which was cut through grey stone with a bluish tint. Her head began to throb, the bones of her skull to creak — she must be approaching the heatstone mine.
There was no sign of Lyf so she checked the map again — and wished she had not. The blurry image in the centre of the lens was Tobry, shifted to a caitsthe and rampaging up a tunnel, his great mouth stretched wide in an insane howl. He had gone berserker and was flinging bloody bodies to right and left, but the scene was out of focus all around him and she could not tell if the bodies were Pale or the enemy. She frantically tried to focus the mage glass, but lost him, and in the chaos she could not find him again.
“Tobry!” she screamed. It was one of her darkest moments; the berserker madness meant that his end could not be far away. And Holm could not help him, even if he were able to get close, because Tali still had the emergency potion in her pack.
She plodded on down the blue tunnel, the emanations from the unseen heatstone mine hurting more with every step. She had to keep ahead of Lyf, though she felt sure he was driving her, herding her.
I can heal him… It was Lyf, speaking into her mind.
He was either trying to tempt her, or rattle her so she gave herself away, and she wasn’t having it. She could play that game too. It’s the catalyz you’re looking for, isn’t it?
Lyf did not reply, and she sensed that he was thinking fast. If she knew its name, did she also know its purpose — the deadly secret that only one person in the world was allowed to know?
And I know what it is, said Tali. The platina circlet.
She sensed rage — or was it fear? She could not tell. She tried to check on Tobry but using the mage glass hurt her now and she could not get it to focus. All she could see was a surge of bodies — one mass dark, the other pale — and a blurred mass of running people flecked with red.
She had to keep ahead of Lyf long enough to find a way to beat him. But the longer she took, the stronger the heatstone would make him, and the more of her people would be killed. They needed her desperately but there was no way to get back to them.
Tali rounded a corner. The passage opened out and was joined by another, a broad down-sloping ramp that she had never seen before, curving down to her left. She was hesitating at the intersection when she saw someone moving up, stumbling and lurching wildly from side to side as
though drunk. But not mildly drunk — intoxicated to the point that he could barely stand up.
“War!” Wil wailed, blood and mucus dribbling from his alkoyl-eaten nose. “War in beautiful Cython. Not the right ending,” he screamed, waving a fuming platina flask in the air.
Who’s there? said Lyf sharply.
It’s Mad Wil, said Tali. Your man. And he’s carrying a flask of alkoyl. I seem to remember that alkoyl hurts you, Lyf.
Ah, but Wil does what I tell him to, and he wants to glide his fingers around your pretty white throat and choke the life out of you. He wants that, desperately, Tali. Should I let him?
CHAPTER 98
Grandys’ troops gathered around, swilling from their flagons and calling out bets on how many seconds Rix could survive in the icy cistern. Few wagers were over a hundred seconds. His cretinous thugs can’t count any higher, Rix thought sourly.
The cold was seeping into his muscles by the time he saw Glynnie’s white, desperate face appear at the far side. She was held by the same two fellows who had thrown Rix in. Were they going to cast her in as well?
He floundered through sharp pieces of ice like broken glass, reached the side and tried to pull himself out, but the inner wall of the cistern was covered in slime and he could not get a grip. He pushed upwards and caught the rim. Grandys, swaying drunkenly, put his hand in the middle of Rix’s forehead and shoved him back in.
Rix trod water, the cold leaching his strength. A hand reached out to him. He made a grab for it. It was slim and pale, a woman’s cold hand. He looked up. Lirriam! She met his eyes, smiled, then shook him free and thrust him under. Everyone roared with drunken laughter.
Rix knew he was beaten. He had failed Glynnie, and failed Hightspall too. But he fought the despair. He was never giving in.
The cold was making his bones ache, slowing his movements and undermining his will to keep going. How long could he last? Another few minutes in the icy water would finish him, though he suspected he would be hauled out before the end and subjected to a worse fate. Drowning was too good for a traitor, would-be deserter, oath-breaker and attempted murderer.
He was splashing feebly when he realised that the atmosphere around the cistern had changed. The troops closest to the gates were lurching around, calling out drunken warnings.
Rix caught the rim and, after several attempts, managed to pull himself up until he could see over. A flight of arrows came whistling through the open gates and two soldiers slumped over the side of the cistern. One had a red-and-yellow feathered arrow right through his neck, the other was dead with three similar arrows in a tight group in the middle of his back. Several more men were hit and fell the other way.
His teeth chattered. What was going on? He was so cold that it was hard to think. The arrows bore the colours of Bastion Cowly. Someone must have got away during the attack and called back the men who had marched out that morning. Or perhaps they had seen the bonfire and knew what it meant. Grandys’ drunken debauches after taking a castle were legendary.
A second flight of arrows tore into Grandys’ troops, cutting down another seven, then a third flight. Grandys staggered around, an arrow deep in his right shoulder where the opal armour had cracked.
He reached back and after several attempts snapped off the shaft. “Attack, attack!” he bellowed.
But at the sight of their leader’s blood, and a quarter of their friends fallen to an enemy shooting from the darkness, a drunken panic set in and his troops fell over themselves to get away. Lirriam and the other three Heroes had disappeared.
The cold was unbearable now. Rix tried to pull himself out but his arms lacked the strength to heave his weight up the slime-covered side of the cistern.
Grandys fumbled for his sword but his sheath was empty. “Maloch?” he said thickly, looking around. “Maloch?”
He’d dropped the sword on a bench up near the bonfire, earlier, but perhaps was too drunk to remember. He caught sight of Rix, clinging to the edge, grinned and clenched an opal-crusted fist. As he was lurching towards Rix with murder in his eye, little Glynnie appeared to his left, swinging a six-foot baulk of timber.
“Try me, you stinking mongrel!”
Grandys turned and reached out, swaying, but too late. The baulk of timber, swung with all her strength, slammed into his face, breaking the opal armour off his nose and driving him backwards. He staggered around, then crashed against the side of the cistern next to Rix, blood pouring from his smashed nose.
“Rix is mine,” Glynnie said with deadly menace, and whacked Grandys again, splitting his left ear. “Touch him again and you die.”
Grandys’ eyes almost popped with astonishment and fury. He bellowed and tried to heave himself upright to go for her, and he was such a strong brawler that he could end her life with a single blow. Rix swung his right arm around Grandys’ throat and pulled it tight, trying to choke the life out of him, but did not have the strength.
Glynnie reversed the length of timber and jammed the broken end into Grandys’ belly. Brittle opal cracked and a grunt was forced out of him, though he did not seem badly harmed. She struck him between the legs. He let out a strangled roar, prised Rix’s arm from around his throat and swayed on his feet. Glynnie thumped Grandys over the back of the head, driving him to his knees.
“After them,” a man bellowed from outside the gateway. “Cut the gutless dogs down. Avenge our dead and restore the honour of Bastion Cowly.”
“Get out of sight!” hissed Rix, terrified that Glynnie would be shot by mistake.
CHAPTER 99
“All Wil’s fault, Lord King,” said Wil as he reached the top, slobbering and gasping. He wiped his nose on his arm, which was crusted with dried blood and muck to the elbow. “Wil changed the ending. Wil got to atone.”
Tali looked over her shoulder. Lyf was only twenty yards away.
“How could you change the story, worm?” Lyf said coldly.
“Tried to fix Engine but everything went wrong.”
“Your mind is addled; you couldn’t get anywhere near the Engine. Where did you get alkoyl from? Have you been stealing from the stores again?”
“Wil not steal!” cried Wil, staggering towards Lyf and reaching out with his bony arms. “Collected it from Engine’s weepings.”
“Liar! Get out of my sight — no, first bring me the iron book you stole from Palace Ricinus.”
“Book gone, Lord King,” whispered Wil.
The feet of Lyf’s crutches squealed against the stone floor as he twisted around. “What happened to it?” he thundered.
“Melted book down, Lord King. Reforged the pages. Tried to write it again, but it didn’t work!” Wil howled. “Couldn’t make the writing go right.”
Tali looked from Wil to Lyf, whose face was drained of colour. He shot into the air so rapidly that his long boots slipped down, exposing his weakness, the stumps of his legs. “Go!” he thundered.
Wil cried out, tilted the flask up to his nose cavity and tilted it. Alkoyl fumed out, flesh sizzled, he gasped and cringed away down the ramp, weeping piteously.
Now! Tali thought. She slipped the small piece of heatstone out of her pouch and hurled it at Lyf’s stumps. It struck the left-hand stump with a loud crack, then clattered to the floor. Lyf let out a cry of agony and doubled over, clutching his shinbones.
Tali dared not try to get past him; her only choice was to flee down the curving ramp. She did not know where it went, but at least it led away from the heatstone deposit. She bolted down and, after a vertical descent of some fifty feet, entered a vast, open chamber several hundred yards long and wide, carved from the native rock, white marble.
Tali looked back. Lyf wasn’t in sight though she could hear his crutches on the ramp. Where could she hide?
The chamber’s rocky ceiling, more than thirty feet above her, was supported by pillars of carved stone, six feet square at their bases, arranged in intersecting arcs which resembled alchymical symbols. She ran down and took cover behind th
e nearest pillar. Wil had disappeared.
To her left, stacked against the side wall of the great chamber near the base of the ramp, was a hip-high cube of heatstone bricks. She wasn’t going anywhere near it. The chamber was softly lit by a number of glowstone plates mounted on the ceiling, but there were deep shadows too, plenty of places for her to hide — and for Wil to have hidden.
Where was he? Though he was addled, and seemed pitiful, Tali knew how dangerous he was. She had seen him choke Tinyhead, a big man, to death with those long, callused fingers. She could not see Wil, for the chamber was crowded with large, complicated pieces of equipment the like of which she had never seen before. He could be lurking anywhere.
Ahead were a variety of furnaces, some tall, narrow and made of grey iron, others squat constructions built from small, lime-green firebricks. Flues mounted beneath the ceiling carried the fumes away. She was on the forbidden alchymical level, and this curving ramp must be the way the Cythonians went up and down. Did the walled-off drive emerge somewhere on the other side? If it did not, she would be trapped here.
Tali scurried behind one of the firebrick furnaces and peered back towards the ramp. She could hear Lyf coming, the click of his crutches slow and deliberate. Keeping behind the furnaces, she scurried across towards the centre of the chymical level, to a cluster of distilling apparatuses.
The equipment in the room, she now realised, was arranged in clusters according to purpose — furnaces behind her, stills, alembics and retorts here, and to her right was an array of enormous flasks, their contents seething and bubbling on beds of heatstone bricks. One flask held a yellow fluid, thick as porridge. Another was watery and purple, with scintillas of silver rising and falling as it boiled.
Other clusters contained kinds of equipment she could not identify, although she had heard the names mentioned in her slave days — abluters, sublimaters, crystallisers, elixerators, calciners…