by Ian Irvine
Flydd knew it far better than Colm could have, but remained silent.
‘We were burned out of our manor by the lyrinx, or the human scum who served them. I was too young to understand, though I can never forget our home ablaze with uncanny fire and the old servants screaming and running across the yard, burning, burning …
‘Mum and Dad couldn’t fight the lyrinx. The whole of Bannador was ablaze; there was war and blood and fire everywhere. The enemy were determined to burn us out. Even Thurkad fell, a few years later – the greatest city in the world.’
And the oldest, Flydd thought. The priceless treasures of more than three thousand years had been lost that day. He often reflected on how long it had survived, and how quickly it had been destroyed.
‘It happened again as we fled in a wagon to the coast.’ Colm’s eyes were black pools of horror. ‘We were attacked from the air, and the wagon and horses were burned with uncanny fire; we lost everything we had left.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Flydd. There was nothing more to be said, for such human tragedies had happened a hundred thousand times during the war, on both sides.
‘We ended up in a refugee camp on the other side of the Sea of Thurkad, near Nilkerrand. At least, it was called a refugee camp.’ Colm’s voice dripped bitterness now, the bitterness he could not hold back whenever he talked about his life, and some day it was going to consume him. ‘In reality it was a city of slave labour, walled in with a palisade and patrolled by armed guards, where even the littlest children worked day and night, every day of the year, making equipment for the war.’
The cursed war, though long over, continued to intrude into all their lives. And Chief Scrutator Ghorr’s corrupt council had given up trying to win it, for the war had allowed them to maintain their grip on power and wring it ever tighter. Had Colm known that, his hands would have been around Flydd’s throat in an instant, though it had not been Flydd’s doing.
‘We spent years in that camp,’ Colm went on. ‘Terrible years where I saw my parents dying before my eyes. They couldn’t take any more; if they hadn’t had me and my sisters to protect they’d have wasted away and died. But it all came to nothing in the end, of course,’ he said savagely.
‘That’s where I met Nish,’ Colm went on after an interval. ‘He dropped out of the sky, half-dead, clinging to the wreckage of an air-floater.’
‘The very first air-floater,’ said Flydd. ‘As it happens, I sent him out on it, though I didn’t expect it would carry him halfway across the continent of Lauralin.’
‘We took him in at the risk of all our lives, and in return Nish promised to help me regain my lost heritage. Though he never did.’ The fury was gone. Colm sounded defeated, as though nothing mattered any more.
‘He might yet do so,’ said Flydd. ‘Once this is over.’
‘Ha!’ Colm snorted. ‘Not long after he came, the camp was attacked with uncanny fire. I remember flames leaping above the roof and a horde of lyrinx swooping down on us. People ran in all directions but the gates were closed, and nearly everyone died. We escaped but I lost Mum and Dad and my two sisters. I searched for weeks; months; years; but I never found them. Do you wonder that uncanny fire arouses such terror in me?’
‘I’m really sorry, Colm.’
They crouched with their backs to the altar, with the overhang above them and the flame roaring in their ears, and after a minute or two Colm stopped shuddering.
‘We’ve got to succeed,’ said Flydd, trying to convince himself. ‘If Nish is lost, we’re the sole resistance.’
‘Save for the Defiance,’ said Colm.
‘If Vivimord did win, he’d be worse than the God-Emperor, who is, at least, an accomplished ruler. Under Vivimord, the world would fall into civil war, and that would be the worst outcome of all, for even a dictator like Jal-Nish is better than anarchy. The fate of Santhenar is up to me, and if the only way out of here is to walk the shadow realm, I’ve got to do it – alone if necessary.’
‘I’m not going there,’ Colm repeated.
Please let there be another way, Flydd thought, for several more memories had come back, of things Rassitifer had told him about the shadow realm. How could he hope to get through without the protection of the spells he’d put into the lost crystal? ‘I’m sure the abyssal flame is the key,’ he mused, ‘if I can only discover how to use it.’
Colm half-rose, staring towards the double doors, which were faintly illuminated by the flame. ‘The left-hand door just moved.’
They crawled behind the altar. ‘If it was Vivimord, I’d know it, so it must be Jal-Nish’s advance guard. Prepare to defend yourself.’ Flydd drew his knife, knowing it would be useless against soldiers armed with swords. The flame had to be the answer, but how was he to use it?
Colm seemed unnaturally calm now. ‘I’ve been expecting to die for so long, it’s almost like an old friend at the door.’
‘When Death puts his blade to your throat you’ll find the will to fight. Let’s see if I can do something with her flame, to scare them off. Follow my lead.’
‘I have been,’ Colm muttered, ‘and look where it’s got me.’
The door was pushed wide and in the darkness beyond it Flydd made out green iridescent reflections – the abyssal flame reflecting off the armour of the God-Emperor’s Imperial Militia, his second-best troops.
If the woman in red had wanted him to use the flame all along, she’d have to show him how. He stood up, keeping cover behind the altar, and raised the taphloid, hoping it would reveal another glimpse of her. The abyssal flame flickered and wavered away without showing him anything. His chest tightened.
‘There’s three of them,’ said Colm. ‘Two with scimitars, the third with a war axe. They’re mighty big.’
‘Size isn’t everything.’
The original Flydd, though a small, gaunt man, had slain many a warrior in combat through his skill with a sword, not to mention his low cunning and a dash of mancery in emergencies. Unfortunately his renewed body still didn’t fit and he was afraid it would let him down again. But how else was he to fight?
Use the flame, fool!
Her voice was even hoarser and more strained, as if it had taken a mighty effort to speak to him. How am I to use the flame, Flydd thought, but received no answer.
The leading soldier shouted, ‘There they are; behind that altar,’ and they moved in.
Exposing the metal side of the taphloid, he thrust it as close to the flame as he could bear its prickly, tingling heat. A huge bubble formed and swirled up on a current of air, turning slowly, and this time he saw clearly what was imprinted on it. Everyone must have, since the bubble was transparent.
The woman in red was standing by a fire, holding a crystal chalice in her left hand, and raised it high as if saluting an unseen observer. Green flame flickered in the bowl. She lowered the chalice, drained it in a long swallow and tossed it over her shoulder to smash in the fireplace. Looking up suddenly as if she’d seen him, she pointed at Flydd with her right index finger.
He felt a burning pain in the centre of his forehead – a pain he remembered from renewal – as if the sun’s rays had been focused there. Was she attacking him, or waking something? She slumped backwards into a chair, in evident distress, and the bubble popped.
His heart skipped several beats, then began to race. The pain became a wedge driven into his skull, sharper than before. He staggered and clutched at his head, but the pain disappeared and his knife hand began to tingle.
Use the flame, she had said, and its touch had also tingled. Knife to flame? He reached out with the tip of the knife, and as soon as it entered the flame the knife shook in his hand and began to make a faint humming sound.
Sword clashed on sword. Flydd looked around dazedly, knowing he’d lost precious seconds. Colm had his back to the altar and was fighting for his life against a soldier half a head taller and twice his weight. Another man was coming at him from the left, swinging the war axe, while the third was
advancing on Flydd, carving the air with a span-long scimitar. They weren’t planning to take prisoners.
Colm had been driven to one knee and his assailant was raising his scimitar for a blow that would split him from skull to buttocks like a side of beef. Flydd lunged at the soldier, swinging the singing knife in a wicked slash, in the faint hope that he would falter.
The note of the blade rose as it moved and a fiery lance of light extended from it, carving a streak across the soldier’s iridescent chest plate. Flydd’s fingers stung. He could barely hold the knife, which was vibrating wildly, singing piercingly. His heart began to hammer like a set of native drums and his chest burned from front to back.
The soldier screamed; steam wisped from the thin line which the light had carved right through his armour, followed by curtains of pulsing blood. His legs buckled and he fell.
The other two soldiers were frozen in place, staring at the dead man. Flydd’s hand was throbbing now; he swung the shrieking blade in a wobbly arc towards the soldier nearest to him. The light lance passed across the man’s throat, just above his armour, as he turned to run.
He kept turning but his head did not. Colm gagged, for the soldier’s eyes remained locked on his, while his body was facing the other way, the sheared-off head perched neatly on his stub of neck. He kept moving and head and body separated; the eyes went dull in the flame-light and the head toppled off, bouncing twice before coming to rest near Flydd’s foot. He nudged it out of the way, then had to let go of the shuddering blade, whose light was carving smoking arcs across the murals and the ceiling.
It clattered to the floor and the light went out. The beheaded soldier managed two more steps, blood fountaining from his neck, before slamming into the floor. The soldier with the war axe was pounding for the doors.
‘Stop him!’ Flydd gasped, barely able to stand up because his muscles were spasming violently. He slumped onto the base of the altar, legs kicking.
Colm swung his sword around his head and hurled it viciously at the fleeing man, but he had already crashed through the double doors and run. ‘Missed!’
‘He’s gone to warn the God-Emperor of this deadly new power,’ Flydd said ruefully, as Colm limped after his blade. ‘Curse him.’ He inspected his swollen fingers, which were covered in little white blisters.
‘How did you do that?’ said Colm as he came back.
‘I didn’t.’
TWELVE
Maelys was propelled towards the far wall so furiously that the air whistled around her ears. She threw up her hands in a hopeless attempt to protect herself, but passed straight through the wall and felt no more than cold rippling along her body. She slid down a glassy slope, the gown riding up above her, passed through a circular hole and kept falling.
Splat! She landed hard on something familiarly soft and slimy-oozy that had to be a mass of swamp creepers, and slid between them up to her hips. Yuk! They felt even worse on her bare skin. She flailed and kicked her way out until she lay precariously on top, in danger of slipping back in with the slightest movement.
As her eyes adjusted, Maelys discovered that she was in a deep circular stone pit, at least as wide as the bedchamber she’d been ejected from. Two small pale eyes gleamed five or six spans above her, suspended in the angle between the domed roof and the wall. The swamp creepers began to squirm all around her and she drew her legs up towards her stomach, feeling sick.
‘Sweet, sweet revenge!’ Phrune gurgled from on high. His nauseating face was looking down at her through the circular hole, and he’d swallowed his intestines, allowing him to speak.
‘This is legitimate retribution,’ Vivimord reminded him. ‘I was testing you, Maelys, to see if you were suitable for Nish after all. I really thought you were, for you’re a remarkably clever girl; you’ve thwarted both me and Jal-Nish, time and again. Had you done what was required of you in the bed-chamber you would have been pregnant by now, and I would have honoured you above all other women. But when you broke my enchantment it proved you could never be trusted, and now you’re going to die in a way that will be a lesson to everyone in my realm.’
‘You have no realm,’ she spat, ‘you murderous lunatic!’
‘Ah, but I will have one, and you will become my first public exhibit, and lesson.’
She could not bear his gloating triumph, nor Phrune’s sick bloodlust. Maelys looked away but could see no means of escape, for the curved walls of the pit offered no handholds. Several corded webs hung high above, well out of reach, and from their faint shimmer they must have been freshly made. If she touched one, she would be stuck fast; prey. That left only one other way out, though it sickened her to have to beg for her life.
‘Please, give me another chance. I’ll have Nish’s baby … or anything.’
‘I don’t give anybody a second chance,’ said Vivimord, ‘and certainly not you. You’re a threat to the Deliverer, Maelys Nifferlin, and any one of a thousand pliable girls will eagerly take your place.’
‘Are you going to leave me here to die?’ she said hoarsely. Somehow she doubted it.
‘A lesson to all, I said. A public exhibit. Do you see the two pale eyes under the roof?’
Maelys swallowed, but it didn’t help, for her throat was parchment-dry.
‘It’s a vigorous young octopede,’ Vivimord said with relish, ‘freshly mated and ready to breed. They live on the blood of swamp creepers, milking them like a herd of cattle, but to reproduce, octopedes need warm-blooded creatures – or, rather, hosts.’
She let out an involuntary cry.
‘After it feels you all over, and paralyses you with its sting, and does other unspeakable things that you’ll discover soon enough, it will spear you in the belly with its ovipositor and lay its eggs in you. After the way you’ve stalked Nish these past months you may find that a trifle ironic. Once you’ve been inovulated, I’ll take you with me, paralysed but conscious, and make a live exhibit of you in my court so all the Defiance can see the little octopede grubs hatch – and feed.’
Maelys felt paralysed already. She reached up towards him, to beg for her life, but no sound came forth. She knew it was hopeless.
‘I’ll leave you to your fate, Maelys. Jal-Nish’s army is close now and I’ve got to keep him away until I can round up your friends. I’m going to make examples of them too, all save Nish. He’s the key to all our futures.’
Vivimord withdrew, though dead Phrune remained at the hole for a few seconds, staring down at her with those empty eyes before, with a twitch of the head that extruded a white length of entrails, he was gone.
Maelys studied her nemesis. The octopede was far bigger than her, and had an elongated, squishy body like a long balloon squeezed in two places. Its white, sagging skin was covered in warty pustules that oozed a creamy substance. It resembled the skin of a particularly unpleasant toad, and no doubt the ooze was poisonous. The plump, stubby legs ended in little clinging hooks while the lance-like tail flicking back and forth must be the ovipositor with which it would deposit its eggs inside her.
She rubbed her slippery arms, which were covered in goose pimples, and slid backwards across the swamp creepers. To think she’d been afraid of them. The enemy of my enemy is my friend; was there any way she could use them?
The octopede’s oval eyes slanted across the front of its sloping head. A pair of hook-shaped claws were upraised, the pincers opening and closing rhythmically. It began to creep to the centre of its web, watching her all the while. The urge to give way to her deep, numbing fear and scream was almost overwhelming, but she had to resist it. Panic would be fatal.
The beast began to lower itself on a glistening cord extruded from a ring of spiky spinnerets at its posterior. It was curled into a semicircle with its ovipositor pointing at her and its hook-claws opening and closing, clacker-clack.
Her throat grew tight as she remembered how fast it had moved in the bedchamber. It could drop on her, catch her in its claws or spear her with the ovipositor, but how wa
s she to fight it? She would be hard-pressed to avoid it; she couldn’t even stand up on the slippery swamp creepers.
She scanned the walls in case she’d missed some means of escape, but they were solid stone. The only way out was past the octopede, unless … unless there was a hole down below. Could she burrow down through the swamp creepers? The thought was revolting, but she checked on the octopede, now swaying on its web, and knew she had no choice.
She began to take deep breaths as it lowered itself on its web cord. The swamp creeper gunk felt disgusting but she reminded herself that they were on her side – they would be shielding her from the common foe.
The octopede uncoiled and dropped sharply on its line, its plump limbs extending towards her, and the clacking of its hook-claws became more staccato. Go, now! Maelys upended herself and dived headfirst into the squirming mass of swamp creepers, clawing them out of the way as she tried to pull herself lower.
It was easy for the first half span, for she slid between them under her own weight, but below that the swamp creepers were ever more tightly packed and every hand-span she moved down took a greater effort. As she clawed at the huge slugs, she imagined the octopede hanging above her exposed legs, ready to sting.
She pulled them down but a huge swamp creeper jammed under her knees, leaving her right foot and part of her leg exposed. She heaved again, her panic rising.
A shocking pain speared through the back of her calf. The octopede had got her with a hook-claw and Maelys could feel her flesh being torn. She would have screamed but could not spare the breath.
She wrenched free and dragged herself lower in the squirming mass. Her calf was a shrieking agony; it felt as though it had been ripped open. Maelys gasped and lost the last of her air, but if she came up for more the octopede would be on her instantly. She groped down as far as she could reach in case there was a hole below her, but felt nothing save more creepers; creepers everywhere.