by Ian Irvine
‘To the wall,’ hissed Zham, sweeping them together in his long arms and thrusting them backwards as the clay seal began to crack and fall out. ‘Pretend Nish has gone through the hidden door. When Jal-Nish comes in, we all attack him at once.’
Fragments crashed to the floor and misty light flooded in. Maelys reached out towards the wall and yelled, ‘Nish?’ as shrilly as she could.
‘What the –?’ cried Jal-Nish, then leapt to the floor of the cave.
Maelys spun around, trying to maintain the pretence that Nish had disappeared. Jal-Nish came forwards, staring at the closed door. ‘How did he get away?’
‘Get him!’ roared Zham, hurling himself at Jal-Nish.
Nish propelled himself to his feet. Jal-Nish spun around, sure he was under attack, but Nish wasn’t going for him. He dived and thrust his left hand deep into Reaper.
And shrieked.
THREE
‘You should not have done that, Son,’ said Jal-Nish with icy calm. ‘I’m not going to protect you this time.’
Nish was writhing on the floor, frantically trying to jerk his hand free, but it was held fast and his wrist and forearm were blistering and growing redder by the second. Maelys caught a whiff of burning flesh and was glad Nish hadn’t told her what he was going to do. If she’d done that to herself …
As everyone rushed Jal-Nish, he caressed the upper surface of Reaper. Zham was hurled sideways against the hidden door; the crack-crack sounded like ribs breaking. Colm went flying across the cavern, thudding into the left-hand wall with his shoulder and side. Maelys dived for Jal-Nish’s ankles, trying to heave him off his feet, but was driven face-first into the moss.
Flydd must have thrown something, for Jal-Nish doubled over and fell to his knees, spit spraying through the mouth slit of his mask. Nish’s shrieks broke off; he brought his free hand up and crashed it into his father’s chin, sending the half mask clanging off the stone sill and over the precipice. Maelys caught a glimpse of the scarred, noseless, suppurating horror of Jal-Nish’s face, destroyed by a lyrinx’s claws thirteen years ago. Despite all the power the tears gave him, he had never been able to repair the injuries.
Jal-Nish’s one eye glazed, his hand fell away from Reaper and he collapsed, unconscious. The quicksilver surface of the Profane Tear turned a dull, roiling red and a hideous clanging erupted from it. The rest of the crazed barrier exploded out of the entrance, tearing the curtains of moss and lichen away, and Maelys heard an answering clanging from bow and stern of the sky palace, a few hundred paces away.
Soldiers ran along the deck, the white armour of the Imperial Guard shimmering, their adamantine blades raised high. The ultimate crime had been committed: the God-Emperor’s sacred person had been attacked and they burned to avenge the insult. They converged on the copper plank-path that linked the sky palace to the cavern.
‘Kick the plank away,’ said Flydd.
Maelys ran and took hold of it with both hands but it was so heavy she could not budge it. Only minutes to live, she thought, but a whole eternity for the dying. Nish’s hand was still caught and his lower arm was smoking; his mouth opened and closed as if he were silently shrieking his lungs out.
Maelys couldn’t bear to see his agony. She scrambled towards him on hands and knees. ‘Nish, Nish?’
She had reached for his sleeve when Flydd shouldered her out of the way. ‘Don’t touch him, lest you end up the same way.’
‘But … Nish … why did he do it …?’
Flydd scooped dry moss from the floor, wrapped it around Nish’s wrist and heaved. The moss began to smoulder, then burst into flame. Flydd cursed but didn’t let go. With a wrench, he tore Nish’s hand free of Reaper.
Maelys nearly threw up, for his hand was a smoking ruin and smelt of burnt meat. She darted to the sill, tore up handfuls of wet moss and covered his hand in it. Steam boiled out; he gave another silent scream. She dragged him to the entrance and thrust his hand out under the cascading water.
Flydd ripped the sleeve off his shirt and pulled it over Nish’s hand. Maelys had to help Flydd tie the knots, for renewal had cost him his coordination as well as his Art.
‘I can do nothing for the pain, Nish,’ said Flydd. ‘Did you succeed?’
Nish tried to speak, but his face twisted in another silent rictus. When it finally passed he tried again. ‘No choice … only way … bolster clearsight. Think it worked. Take … wrists.’
Flydd took his blistered wrist, Maelys the sound one, and Nish strained. ‘I see it,’ he slurred. ‘See … way.’
‘How?’ said Flydd urgently. ‘Zham? Colm? Hold the soldiers off.’
Colm was on his feet, swaying as he attempted to lift Zham. The giant’s forehead was bloody and he was holding his side. He leaned against the rear wall and wiped blood out of his eyes with the back of his hand. Drawing his monstrous blade, he advanced unsteadily across the cavern. ‘I’ll hold them off as long as I can, surr.’
Tears sprang to Maelys’s eyes, for Zham was utterly reliable, blindly loyal. She dashed them away. ‘Nish? How am I supposed to give Xervish back his Art?’
‘Don’t … think – can. He’s got to … take back. But without Art …’
In other words, it was impossible. ‘Then how do I use it?’ She shook his arm in her agitation.
On the floor, Jal-Nish kicked feebly, then slurred, ‘They’re coming for us – I warned you they were coming, Son. Why wouldn’t you listen?’
‘What’s he on about?’ said Colm.
‘Father’s paranoid,’ said Nish. ‘He thinks we’re being watched by creatures from the void.’
‘Maybe we are,’ said Flydd. ‘That’s where the lyrinx came from, and they weren’t the first.’
‘Father sees enemies everywhere,’ sneered Nish. ‘The mighty God-Emperor lives in terror of being overthrown.’
Mocking laughter issued from the roiling surface of Reaper.
‘How do I use the Art?’ Maelys repeated.
Nish’s eyes swam in circles. The pain was killing him. ‘You … can’t.’
She wanted to scream. ‘Then you’ve maimed yourself for nothing.’
Nish shook his head. ‘Together,’ he whispered. ‘You’ve … got to do … it together.’
‘I can’t perform any kind of mind-merge without my Art,’ said Flydd.
‘I don’t know what a mind-merge is,’ said Maelys. ‘Father stunted my talent when I was little, to save me from the scriers. That’s why he gave me my taphloid.’
‘Yes!’ cried Flydd. ‘Take it off, quick!’
With her free hand Maelys lifted it over her head, feeling the wrench that she suffered every time she was forced to remove it. She felt naked without it, exposed to the world, for her unshielded talent created an aura which a skilled scrier would detect instantly.
Flydd snatched the taphloid from her hand, holding it by the chain.
‘I can feel your great gift shining out in all directions, Maelys,’ said Flydd, ‘beating on me like hot sun on bare skin. You must focus it on me alone – though not as I am now. Look for the old, decrepit but true me; the one you met before I took renewal. Try to find that man, no matter how deep he’s buried. I can’t open the way, but he may be able to – if he still exists.’
Another painful, mocking laugh issued from Reaper. Maelys restrained an urge to kick it out the entrance.
‘Take my wrist,’ said Nish urgently. ‘They’re coming fast.’
She tried to do what Flydd had asked, but couldn’t see him at all, for something obscured everything in her inner eye – a heavy, churning mass of black, burning from the inside out but never consumed, Reaper. This close, its power was singeing the fine hair on her arms. Reaper longed to consume her, and it was as corrupt as the man who had created it from the implosion of the Snizort node all those years ago. Those compressed forces had distilled everything good and noble out of it, and now it debauched everything it touched. It longed to corrupt her, to burn her to ashes …
&n
bsp; ‘Maelys?’ An open hand slapped her hard across the cheek.
She opened her eyes, tore her mind away from Reaper’s pull. Flydd was glaring at her.
‘You … struck me.’ She touched her fingers to her stinging cheek.
‘What’s the matter with you?’
‘Reaper!’ She shuddered. ‘It’s too strong; too near. I can’t resist it; I can’t see anything but Reaper.’
‘Try harder. You’ve got to look beyond it; there’s no other way.’
There was shouting outside, then the clash of sword on sword. Zham swayed in the entrance as he fought the first of the crack Imperial Guard. He had the advantage of height and position, but clearly his broken ribs were troubling him and he couldn’t hold the enemy off for long.
‘Wait,’ Maelys said. ‘I was wearing my taphloid when I saw Jal-Nish using Gatherer in the Pit of Possibilities –’
Flydd slapped his hand across her mouth so hard that her lips stung. They both turned towards Jal-Nish, who was twitching again.
‘It’s coming for us,’ Jal-Nish said. ‘Oh, fire and flame, it’s coming!’
She averted her eyes from his ghastly face.
‘I wish you hadn’t mentioned that,’ said Flydd in a low voice. ‘Reaper may allow Jal-Nish to register what we say, even when he’s unconscious, and I don’t want him to know what you saw in the Pit.’
It reminded her of the gloomy futures Nish had seen in the Pit of Possibilities. None of them had contained her; was she destined to die young, soon, today? It shook her. If her fate was preordained, what was the point of fighting, or indeed, anything? No! she thought with a rush of anger. I refuse to believe it. I will fight on; and I will prevail.
Metal clanged on metal. Colm was standing to Zham’s right, thrusting his blade at a soldier on the plank, just outside. Zham skewered the man behind him through the neck joint of his armour and twisted his blade out in a gush of bright blood. The soldier toppled off the wind-shaken plank, but another stood behind him, and many more behind him. The plank was bowed down under their weight.
Flydd slipped the taphloid into her hand. ‘Try it!’
Maelys put it around her neck and felt the pressure of Reaper ease. She closed her eyes and tried to blank everything out save her memory of the old Flydd. It was hard, for there was so much to intrude – the thump of sword on armour, the grunts and screams of the fighting soldiers, and the howling updraught, which always picked up as the day drew on. Nish, beside her, was panting like a woman in labour from the escalating agony of his burned hand. Most distracting of all, she kept catching whiffs of the rotting flesh of Jal-Nish’s terrible face.
Fyllis, splayed on the wall of Jal-Nish’s torture chamber. That image helped her to focus on what had to be done – find the real Flydd. She felt the strength of his hand around her wrist and imagined it to be the old man’s feebler grip.
It was working. Now she remembered him as she’d first seen him, just days ago: drinking and laughing with Nish on the rickety bench outside his amber-wood hut. She’d envied them their easy camaraderie and their long friendship, for she’d felt alone and abandoned since Nifferlin Manor had been torn down.
Flydd had led her out into the stink-snapper-infested marshes and questioned her about the most intimate and embarrassing details of her travels with Nish. Later, she remembered Flydd’s fury as she had pressured him to take renewal. If she’d had an inkling of what it would do to him, she would never have opened her mouth.
Colm gasped and stumbled backwards, holding his left shoulder. Blood was seeping through his fingers. ‘Just a scratch,’ he said through gritted teeth, though the gash was as long as his little finger.
Zham swung his blade back and forth, sweeping another of the Imperial Guard off the plank, the man’s helmeted head flying right and his body toppling to the left. Colm gripped his sword in bloody fingers and returned to his position. They were safe for another minute.
She conjured up that first memory again: Flydd, barely tipsy at all, laughing with a sozzled Nish. It felt like a lifetime ago. She tried to see into Flydd, to understand what drove him, good and bad. How had he held to his purpose despite being trapped at the top of Mistmurk Mountain for nine years, knowing that his plan to free Nish from prison had come to naught?
Flydd had never given up; moreover, he had maintained his sense of humour and that ferocious will to fight on, no matter the cost. He reminded her of her father, Rudigo, who had been forced to flee from Jal-Nish’s vicious lieutenant, Seneschal Vomix, when she was little. Rudigo, whose tortured body now lay in the anonymous burial grounds behind Mazurhize. That was her fault too, for as a child she’d unwittingly insulted Vomix and it had drawn attention to her family’s gifts.
Suddenly she saw Flydd – the real Flydd – just for a second, and again felt that burning sensation surrounding her heart and flowing down her arm to where his fingers clenched like an iron manacle. Nish stiffened and tried to pull away from her other hand, but she maintained the contact even though her head was spinning and her knees had gone weak. Must – hold – on. Must hold –
She was lying on the floor with Nish bending over her. Maelys felt cold now, to her very core; frozen and empty. The taphloid was lying beside her and she reached out for the comfort of it.
‘I’ve got back a trace of my Art,’ said Flydd. ‘I can see the way!’
He turned towards the rear wall, the fifth crystal shining through his fingers, and reached out between the columns. A dazzling flash lit up the cavern; the crystal burst and fiery shards flew out in a fan, though all were extinguished when they hit the hidden door, as if it had drawn the power from them.
One glowing fragment flew straight up, bounced off the roof and curved down in an arc towards Maelys, landing on her stomach. Had Flydd taken back all his Art, or was part of it still trapped in her? She didn’t feel any different. The shard was useless, but she slipped it into the empty crystal compartment of her taphloid and waited for the door to open.
It did not.
More malicious laughter issued from Reaper as Jal-Nish groaned and came to his knees, unmasked and grotesque. ‘You think you can best me that easily?’ he said in a slurred voice. ‘Even unconscious, I was more than your match, Xervish.’
With a bellow of rage, Nish leapt at his father. The uppercut started at floor level and ended with a sickening crack on the point of Jal-Nish’s scarred jaw, lifting him off his feet, for Nish had hit him with all the pent-up fury of his ten years of imprisonment. Jal-Nish landed on his back in the moss, eyes open, but so deeply unconscious that Reaper’s surface went still. The clanging started again. The Imperial Guards on the copper plank let out a collective roar. A sword rang on Zham’s greatsword.
‘Xervish?’ said Nish, his battered knuckles bleeding onto the moss and his bandaged hand dripping yellow fluid. ‘This can’t all have been for nothing!’
‘It’s over, Nish old friend,’ Flydd said gently. ‘That crystal was special; I spent years priming it to crack into the shadow realm, and protect us while we were there, and without it we’ve lost. As I said on one other memorable occasion, we must face our end with dignity.’
Maelys had read that tale when she was little. Flydd was referring to the time during the lyrinx war when he and his allies had been taken by the corrupt Council of Scrutators in their attack on Fiz Gorgo. After a show trial on a great canvas amphitheatre erected many spans above the roof of the stronghold, all its people had been set to be executed there.
‘I didn’t hear you say it,’ whispered Nish. ‘I was trapped below in the burning tower.’
She’d read his part of the tale many times. In one of the greatest feats of heroism in all the Histories, Nish had cunningly attacked the scrutators and their hundreds of crack guards, rescued the prisoners and, with their aid, had turned ruinous defeat into an unimaginable victory, which had turned the tide of the hopeless lyrinx war and, two years later, had led to that astonishing, yet noble, triumph over the alien enemy. Mae
lys, reliving the tale, realised that she could forgive Nish almost everything because of the hero he had once been, and might be again.
Looking at him now, she could see that he was in agony, but he endured it in silence; he could show no weakness to an enemy who would ruthlessly exploit it.
‘And you saved us all,’ said Flydd, deep in a recovered memory.
‘To die at my hands –’ slurred Jal-Nish from the floor.
How had he roused so quickly? Maelys tasted despair this time; he could never be beaten.
Flydd forced a clump of moss into Jal-Nish’s mouth with the toe of his boot. Jal-Nish fell silent, though his fingers kept moving. Reaper’s surface rippled and Zham staggered backwards, falling against Colm and driving him to his knees.
Flydd stamped on Jal-Nish’s fingers, but too late. With a single bound, a giant of a warrior sprang from the plank onto the sill of the cavern. He was almost as big as Zham, brandishing a cutlass in one hand and a rapier in the other, and cutting and stabbing faster than the eye could follow. Zham came upright but his injuries had weakened him and some of the rapier blows were getting through. He was soon speckled with blood in a dozen places.
The cutlass flashed out to the left. Zham parried, but the warrior lunged and stabbed his rapier half a hand-span into Zham’s mighty thigh. His leg wobbled and he nearly went down.
‘Zham?’ cried Maelys, seeing blood pouring down his leg. Something whirred in front of her; she did not see what it was.
With furious blows, Zham drove the warrior backwards onto the plank. Behind him a line of soldiers waited their turn, and many more were at the railings of the sky palace. The greatest hero in the world could not defeat them all. Maelys felt sick, for the end was inevitable now.
‘Fly, little lady,’ said Zham, turning to smile at her even as he defended furiously. ‘I’m done for, but you can still get away.’
‘No, Zham! The door is closed. It’s over. Lay down your weapon.’
‘Fly! I won’t give up until you pass through.’