by Ian Irvine
‘Very probably,’ Flydd said dryly. If he couldn’t separate himself from the woman in red, he probably would go mad.
A spear shot above their heads, passed in one side of the cone then out the other.
‘That wasn’t supposed to get through,’ he muttered.
Flydd made the cone again, using all the Art she’d shown him. It hurt in the centre of his chest this time; she might have been capable of channelling such power without harm, but he could not. The cone went a speckled blue and grey, like a wild duck’s egg and, feeling as though he was carrying an enormous weight, he stepped towards the crackling flame.
Colm didn’t budge; the moving cone struck his elbow, zzzt. He let out a yelp and clutched his arm.
‘Don’t touch the cone,’ Flydd said over his shoulder.
‘You might have mentioned that beforehand.’ Colm cupped his elbow. ‘I don’t see any way past the flame.’
If he knew what Flydd had in mind, Colm would fight him all the way. Flydd pressed forwards, his renewed heart pounding painfully. This was going to take all the Art he had, and there was no way to test it first. If it wasn’t enough, or if he got it wrong …
‘What the blazes are you doing?’ cried Colm, for Flydd was heading directly towards the curving wall of flame.
He smiled mirthlessly.
‘Flydd!’ Colm grabbed him by the shoulder and tried to heave him around. He’d worked it out. ‘You’ll burn us alive.’
Flydd shook him off. ‘It’s the only way out, and the cone will protect us.’ I hope.
The blow to the side of the head rocked him; he staggered and nearly fell, and Colm, eyes wide and mouth gaping, leapt at him, mad with panic. Flydd didn’t have the strength to fight him; he reached up with the twisted blade and drew the point of the cone down until it touched Colm’s head. The younger man crumpled as if he’d been hit with an axe.
Flydd pressed on. It took an effort to move, for he was carrying Colm’s dead weight on the base of the cone. He heaved it across to the flame, then hesitated. If he was wrong, it would be a most unpleasant way to die. But there was no alternative. He pushed over the edge into the flame.
The cone tilted sideways, and dropped. Flydd’s heart spasmed; he was sure they were going to plummet all the way down to the abyssal source. The cone kept dropping, but he fought it, drawing power – her power – until his galloping heart seemed about to explode. The cone rocked left, right, turned upside down, dropping him on top of Colm, then righted itself and began to bob up and down within the flame.
The burden was even heavier now; Flydd could barely stand up for the weight, and it was so bright in the flame that he had to cover his eyes. The firelight was beating against his skin, drying it to a crisp; even with eyes covered, his mind’s eye was full of green.
It was uncomfortably warm now, and getting warmer, for the cone, like a greenhouse, was allowing heat in but not letting any out. If he couldn’t find the way to the surface soon, they would be baked.
A spear shot by, though this time it bounced off the skin of the cone. Another spear struck it harder, making it slowly rotate. The dissolving rock above them was falling in heavy drops that slid off the steep sides of the cone, though the racket was so loud he couldn’t think for it. Flame gusts buffeted them; it was taking all his strength to keep the cone within the flame and slowly rising into the roof cavity.
He could smell smouldering hair – his or Colm’s. Even if his head had been on fire, he didn’t have the energy to slap it out. Rock collapsed in a deluge; the cone twisted and rolled, throwing him onto Colm again, then shot up and burst out into an empty tunnel.
Flydd directed it away from the flame, but couldn’t hold it; it toppled onto its side, rolled around in a curve, and he could finally let go. The cone vanished; his ears were assailed by the roar of the flame. Cinders flew in all directions and the air had the blistered, metallic reek of a foundry.
‘Come on,’ Flydd croaked.
Colm lay on the floor unmoving. Flydd’s cheeks were burning. He rubbed his hands and the skin rustled like dry paper.
Taking Colm under the arms, he dragged him away from the flame, around a corner and into blessedly cool, moist darkness. The roar and crackle were muted here; he could think again. He laid his burning face against wet rock, rubbed his hands over it and pressed them to the back of his neck.
Colm groaned and kicked a foot.
‘Get up,’ said Flydd. ‘This place is a labyrinth, but Jal-Nish’s scriers will soon track us down. We’ve got to get to the obelisk first, or we’ve failed.’
He lifted Colm to his feet. Colm clung to his shoulder and they lurched into the darkness, moving by feel, since light would be an instant give-away. Around two more corners and the roar of the flame was just a slow reverberation of the air, though Flydd could feel it shaking his bones, which, in the envelope of his renewed self, felt much more sensitive than before.
Colm was recovering now; his fingers no longer clawed into Flydd’s shoulder and his footfalls were more even. ‘If you ever do anything like that again,’ he said in a low, emotionless voice, ‘you’re a dead man.’
He wasn’t joking. Below the surface, Colm churned like lava in the crater of a volcano, and one day he was going to explode.
‘I can hear the abyssal flame again,’ said Colm about half an hour later, as they felt their way up a sloping ramp of broken stone seeping with smelly water.
In the distance Flydd made out a faint, booming crackle. ‘So can I.’
‘That can’t be good.’
‘It’s extremely bad.’ What if it burned all the way up to the plateau, and the uncanny flame met the cold sludge of the marshes?
Flydd slumped against the side wall, pleased that Colm had regained his equilibrium, at least. ‘I feel nearly as bad as I did before renewal.’
‘I feel the way you looked before renewal.’
‘You poor devil!’ Flydd chuckled. ‘I think we can venture a little light here.’ Pearly glows formed at each of his fingertips, like shining peas. ‘We can’t be far from the surface now. I can smell the swamp.’
‘It’s a change from smelling you.’ Colm scooped a handful of muddy water and rubbed it over his face, where it mixed with the dirt, smoke, flaking skin and old blood.
‘And you stink like you just crawled out of someone’s coffin,’ said Flydd with a dry snort. When Colm wasn’t wallowing in life’s injustices he could be good company.
‘Yeah, yours!’ Colm grinned, teeth flashing white in his filthy face. ‘And damn glad I am to be out of it.’ He inspected the rubble slope above them, which ended in a hole too small to crawl through. ‘It won’t be easy to get up there without causing a rockslide. How far does it go, do you think?’
Flydd shrugged. ‘Could be spans.’
‘Then the rubble will take hours to shift. Which we don’t have.’
‘We may not even have minutes.’
‘Use the knife, cut a way out.’
‘It’s dead and I can’t recharge it without the flame – if at all.’
‘Blast a hole with one of your spells, then.’
‘I don’t remember the Art for that. I’m worn out, Colm. Aftersickness has drained me dry.’ Flydd leaned against the side wall and allowed the light to fade to tiny fingertip glimmers.
‘I need that,’ said Colm.
Flydd brightened his fingers again. ‘What for?’
‘Where mancery fails us, we’ll have to make do with muscle.’ Colm went up to the blockage and began to tear at the rubble, pulling rocks out and tossing them down the slope past Flydd.
‘Careful,’ said Flydd. ‘The troops will hear you.’
‘Don’t see as it makes any difference. If we can’t get through damn quick, we’re done for.’
He wrenched at a cabbage-sized rock in the centre of the rubble but it wouldn’t budge.
‘It’s like the keystone of an arch,’ said Flydd. ‘Wriggle it from side to side, carefully, or you’ll bri
ng the lot down on us.’
‘We’re going to die sooner or later,’ Colm said indifferently.
‘Let’s make it a lot later.’
Colm jerked and heaved, and suddenly it gave, and the rubble above with it. Flydd, who was several spans further down, scrambled up onto a little rock ledge. Colm didn’t have time; he turned away and took the blows on his back. Wheelbarrow-loads of broken rock drove him to his knees, then further up a blockage gave with a roar and a deluge of smelly mud poured down on him.
Flydd reached down as Colm was washed past and hauled him out of the flood. He was a cake of stinking ooze matted with rotting reeds, but he looked cheerful for once.
‘If they didn’t know where we were before, they do now,’ Flydd said dryly.
‘We’ll be out on the plateau in a minute.’
Flydd’s stomach was churning again. Once they got to the obelisk he must use the woman’s Arts to open the shadow realm, and what would happen then? Was he no more than a diversion, to be sacrificed so she could escape her enemy?
The sound of the flame was growing louder again. It was now a roaring and a cracking, a booming and a blasting and a shattering, as if it was tearing solid rock to pieces. A spear of pain seared through his chest. He didn’t think he was having a heart attack, though it might have been less painful if he was.
He crawled up the mud-clotted rubble to another blockage. ‘Give me a hand with this,’ he panted, trying to prise out a rock without toppling it on himself.
Clash-clang. ‘Can’t!’ Colm grunted from well below.
Flydd glanced down. The younger man was stabbing at something, and Flydd caught an occasional flash that might have been eyes or teeth, though he couldn’t tell if it were man or beast. ‘Don’t let it get past. We’re nearly there.’
Colm came to his feet, then lunged. There was an inhuman snarl and he fell backwards onto the slope, but bounced to his feet and lunged again.
Flydd wrenched at the stone, slid it to one side and was struck by another deluge, water this time. When it shrank to a malodorous trickle he saw a faint grey light above.
‘We’re here, Colm. Colm?’
‘I’m all right,’ he said breathlessly. ‘Just.’
He clambered up beside Flydd, who smelt blood on him. ‘It nearly got me, whatever it was,’ Colm added, ‘but I got it first.’
‘Good man.’ They scrambled out into the marshes, the sodden ground squelching and sinking underfoot. ‘Keep a sharp eye out for stink-snappers,’ said Flydd in a low voice. ‘We haven’t come all this way to be eaten by a carnivorous plant.’
‘Give me an honest, savage beast anytime. Can you see anyone? Brrr!’
Mistmurk Mountain rose from tropical rainforest, but its flat top stood over a thousand spans high and it was always cold here. Ground mist lay in a thin blanket over the pools and mires that covered all but the stony outer rim of the cloverleaf-shaped plateau, though when Flydd stood up his head poked above the undulating surface of the mist. It was a cloudy night with just the hint of stars.
‘No, but they’re out there. Jal-Nish will have another army along the rim.’ Flydd knew he wouldn’t see them from here. They’d be hiding, waiting.
He scanned the sky and saw nothing. Once we’re spotted, he thought, it will take them a good while to get here. In that time, he had to find what he was looking for, and make it work.
He turned around, searching for landmarks. The marsh-lands were relatively featureless but after nine years on the plateau Flydd knew every pool, reed and moss-covered rock – like that black outcrop to his left, shaped like a pointy, half-peeled lemon, where most of the moss had been grazed off by swamp creepers.
‘This way.’ He began to trudge along the winding strip of firm ground between the pools and mires. ‘It’s not far to the obelisk.’
The ground quivered, rippling the ponds to either side. Steam hissed up from the mire ahead; it had a sulphurous stench.
‘I think the flame is getting hotter,’ said Flydd.
The pond beyond was bubbling; a swamp creeper floated upside down on its surface and the air smelled like boiled meat.
‘I don’t suppose …’ began Colm.
Flydd was salivating too. ‘We haven’t got time,’ he said regretfully. ‘Besides, that water doesn’t smell too good.’
‘Since it’s probably my last meal, I’ll risk it.’ Colm skewered the swamp creeper with his sword, hacked it into chunks and sank his teeth into one. ‘Delicious. Want some?’
‘The way my renewed stomach feels, I won’t risk it.’ Flydd swallowed mouthfuls of saliva, feeling as though he hadn’t eaten in a week.
On the right, an expanse of black mud was slowly rising. Only hours ago it had been a large pool, but the last of the water was draining away, leaving fish and legged eels flapping in the muck. Get moving, or you’ll suffer the same fate, Flydd told himself, and struggled on.
‘There it is,’ said Colm, belching cheerfully.
‘Quiet!’
The tilted stone obelisk was four or five spans long and partly covered in moss and trailing feathers of lichen that largely obscured the ancient Charon symbols engraved into the stone. The growths had been charred off its upper section by an earlier blast from the sky palace, tilting the stone and uncovering the opening through which Maelys had first gained entry to the cursed flame chamber. The obelisk was warm and Flydd could feel the tingle of power now; the woman in red must have opened him to it.
‘Now I understand. The obelisk forms the solid pole of a portal. In ages past, she brought the cursed flame here, using the conjunction between solid stone and ethereal flame to make her portal.’
‘I wondered why you filled that phial at the cursed flame.’
‘I had a different purpose in mind, but if I have to use it here, I will.’
The ground shook and a stone’s throw to their left a geyser erupted in the marsh, followed by an explosion of boiling mud. That’s where the abyssal flame was going to come up, and it was dangerously close. Flydd threw himself behind the obelisk. Colm was struck in the chest by a huge clod of hot mud and reeds and was knocked off his feet. He cried out, clawing away the boiling, clinging muck.
Flydd dragged him into shelter. ‘Stay down. This is only the beginning.’
Colm cooled his scalded chest in a puddle as steam belched up from dozens of fissures, obscuring everything. They crouched under the tilted obelisk as the explosions continued; it was like being next to a mud volcano. Boiling mud was blasted up and out in every direction; chunks the size of oxen rained down, splattering on the obelisk and sliding off its edges to form steaming piles on either side of them.
‘It’s the end of the world,’ said Colm, his eyes huge.
‘Not yet, but I’m doing my best,’ Flydd said sardonically.
The explosions, and the deluge, grew ever louder, the rain of mud more intense. Colm said something but Flydd didn’t catch it; the noise was deafening. The ground was shuddering wildly now.
‘I said, what if the obelisk falls on us?’ Colm shouted in his ear.
Flydd had been thinking the same thing. ‘It’ll end all our worries. If we go out we’ll be buried in hot mud. It’ll stop in a minute.’ As soon as all the mud above the abyssal flame boiled away, and then what? He felt a little shiver of anticipation. The abyssal flame was too powerful, too uncanny. It wouldn’t go out tamely. It was preparing the way for something monumental.
The mud eruptions cut off, though the ground was still shaking. He peered around the edge of the obelisk. The mist and steam had been blasted away and there was just enough starlight to make out a crater wall some fifty paces off, though he wasn’t high enough to see inside it.
Then, with a whistle that grew to a roar, the abyssal flame burst through its last barrier and shot upwards, a ruler-edged rod of green and black fire climbing a hundred spans into the sky. A shockwave blasted outwards, tearing up reeds and overtopping pools. The mud wall collapsed abruptly, deluging Flydd to
the knees, and it was still scalding. He pulled himself out and retreated further under the obelisk.
When the debris settled, he scrambled up to the tip of the obelisk, and in the light of the flame he could see all the way to the edges of the plateau. A line of shadows rose up along the rim. In every direction, as far as he could see, the God-Emperor’s Imperial Militia were climbing to their feet, their armour winking in the glare.
‘They must be three thousand strong,’ said Colm, joining him at the top.
‘At least,’ said Flydd.
‘And there’s no way out.’
‘Bar our portal to the shadow realm.’
In a sudden silence, the sky palace materialised high above them, its white stone sails shining in the light. Flappeters were wheeling around it, riding the updraughts; flocks of bladder-bats appeared from apertures in the sky palace; a wing-ray began to curve down towards them.
‘No way,’ said Colm. ‘None at all.’
SEVENTEEN
Maelys felt as though she’d been following Vivimord for a lifetime, as he drove a dazed, uncomprehending Nish before him. She had tracked them up the perilous stair and through the dark corridors above it, finding her way by smell. There was no sign of dead Phrune but she could smell his unguents on Vivimord’s ruined skin. Phrune must have gone back to the pit for her, and discovered her escape; he would be hunting her now.
She turned around, holding the rapier out like a silver spear, but saw no living thing, nor any walking corpses, thankfully, though as she went on she could feel his dead eyes on her.
She hadn’t learned any more about Flydd or Colm’s fate, though it did not seem possible that they could have escaped the soldiers and Vivimord. So that meant it was all up to her, again. Every success was topped by another disaster, but she had to fight on. She could not allow herself any self-doubt or hopelessness, else she would not be able to continue. Nonetheless, those feelings were always just below the surface.
She kept them at bay by renewing her vow. She was going to destroy Vivimord and Phrune, and rescue Nish. And then …?