by Ian Irvine
He had to keep going now, and quickly. The next step was to form the structure that would become the portal’s entrance. It would shelter them from the raw power needed to open the woman’s long-closed portal and direct it to the shadow realm. Could he do it? Making portals was one of the greatest Arts of all, one that few master mancers from the Histories had ever done successfully. And even with her knowledge, Flydd began to doubt himself.
What shape should the entrance take? In mancery, such things mattered, and if he gave it the same shape as the woman had used when she’d made her portal long ago, resonances of time and place would make this one easier to create. Flydd closed his eyes, opened himself to her memories and saw spirals everywhere: on the obelisk, down at the altar, and even in her memories. That had to be it. Taking power from the abyssal flame for the last time, he focused it, used her portal spell, and its entrance slowly whirled into physical form around the base of the obelisk.
It looked like pale red glass, and had a central dome from out of which spiralled four narrow arms, so elongated that each wrapped around the dome several times. Why four arms? The spirals down below had all been two-armed. He touched the glassy wall but felt nothing; it was just an image, yet to take on physical form.
The roaring abyssal flame suddenly broke into a series of flares, as though its conduit were trying to cough something up. As if that had been a signal, the Imperial Militia must have broken into a run, because the steadily moving lanterns drawing in from the edges of the plateau began to jiggle. The troops were converging on him and getting into position to attack. The flock of bladder-bats let out a massed squeal and dived.
The green flame coughed twice more and died down, plunging the plateau into darkness. In the sudden silence Flydd could hear his ears ringing. Pain gnawed the centre of his chest; acid rose up his throat. Had the flame gone out completely? If it had, he’d made a catastrophic blunder.
‘What’s going on?’ said Colm, shivering. ‘What have you done, Flydd?’
‘I don’t know.’
The abyssal flame suddenly belched higher than before, rushing up past the sky palace and buffeting that monstrous structure like washing on a clothes line. The flame went transparent, almost invisible in the darkness; the pain in his chest was like teeth chewing on his lungs, then the flame turned a brilliant, icy white. That tiny chthonic flame, fuelled by the vapours seeping from deep below the mountain, had grown into a conflagration. Flydd was paralysed by the horror of what he’d created, and he had an awful feeling that they were all going to pay for his folly.
‘No,’ he whispered. ‘No, no!’
‘I don’t see how you could have made things any worse,’ said Colm, standing with his arms crossed protectively over his chest, looking up.
This flame was freezing; Flydd could feel it from a distance. Ice began forming around the edges of the vent and growing upwards in jagged arrays of crystals. He felt just as cold inside, but there was no going back now.
‘Things can always get worse.’ He headed towards the vent. ‘Very much worse.’
‘Flydd?’ cried Colm. ‘We’re almost within range of the soldiers’ spears.’
‘I need fire.’
He didn’t want to go near it; he definitely didn’t want to carry it back. The chthonic fire must have been hidden for a reason and he recalled the woman’s fear of it. And if she was afraid, he should be more so, but the abyssal flame was gone and he had no choice.
He churned through the mud, which had baked hard in some places, was deep and liquid in others, yet near the edge of the flame was already freezing solid. The ice around the edges of the vent had a peculiar pale green tint. Could it be used to contain chthonic fire?
Flydd reached out and gingerly touched his bent knife to a tendril of chthonic flame. The knife went white and made alarming cracking sounds, but held. He carved an oval flask from the peculiar green ice and held it out on the point of the knife until it was full of fire; the knife became so cold that its hilt stuck to his fingers. He thrust the stoppered flask inside his coat with the others, where he could feel the cold burning. Flydd swiftly cut a second flask, pyramidal this time, filled it and stowed it as well. He’d done as much as he could.
The next step was to solidify the portal entrance with them both inside. Once that was done they would be safe – from everything outside it, at least. Flydd made his way back to the obelisk and climbed one step up its slope. Opening one of the chthonic fire flasks, he drew power from it as he’d seen her do, fingertip to forehead. Agony! Mist formed around the obelisk and drifted through the red glass spiral, for its walls were still intangible. How was he to complete it? He didn’t know. He couldn’t think straight for the pain boring into his skull.
Colm scrambled up the obelisk. ‘They’re nearly here.’
Flydd could see the jiggling lanterns from the corner of his eye.
Colm sprang up to the tip, swinging his sword in a vertical arc. Flydd jumped. A bladder-bat squealed as the blade went through one wing and into a bladder filled with the floater gas that kept it aloft. The gas hissed out; the creature’s other wing scraped down the side of the obelisk, then it splashed into the mud, dead.
‘Thanks,’ said Flydd. ‘You’ll have to keep them off.’
‘At last there’s honest work for me to do.’
The implication being that mancery was dishonest work. After today, Flydd couldn’t blame him for thinking it.
Phrune’s fingers tightened on Maelys’s wrist. She swung around, striking at the corpse with her fists, useless though that was – it was animated by Vivimord’s necromantic Arts and the only way to stop it was to chop it into little pieces, but she was unarmed.
The abyssal flame sputtered, then changed from green to a brilliant, frozen white. Maelys didn’t have time to wonder about the ominous transformation; the light illuminated dead Phrune more starkly than sunlight, and he was clad in rags through which his skin had the bleached grey of a fish’s belly. His reek was overpowering now, and something white and slippery dangled from his left hand: a long loop of intestine with a slip-knot at the end.
Phrune let out a slimy chuckle and began to pull her to him. He was twice her weight and far stronger; if he got his arms around her that would be the end. Maelys tried to wrench free but, though his palms had that familiar oiliness, his fingers and thumb had locked around her wrist.
She had only one advantage; he was slow and lumbering, and she was quick with life. Maelys yanked up a clump of reeds with her free hand and smacked Phrune across the eyes with it. He blinked away the mud, focused his empty eyes on her and gave a slow pull on her arm.
She jammed her feet against a ridge of baked mud and strained backwards with all her weight, but wasn’t heavy enough to heave him off balance. Phrune kept pulling, his lacerated mouth open in a deathly grin. She threw herself forwards and dived between his legs before he could react.
She hadn’t broken his hold on her wrist, though, and it was wrenched so badly that she thought the bones were going to break. She steadied her wrist with her free hand, jerked Phrune’s arm between his legs and heaved with all her might. His feet left the ground and she threw her shoulder against him, toppling him onto his face.
He still wouldn’t let go, but Maelys fell with him, driving her knees into his back and pushing him through a thin hard crust into liquid mud, hitting him with her weight again and again until at last his fingers gave enough for her to pull her throbbing wrist free. She jumped up and down on the back of his head, forcing it into the mud as hard as it would go.
Nothing could stop Phrune, though, and when she saw his hands clawing at the reeds and his knees drawing up, she leapt onto the firmer ground next to the white flame, which had been baked hard by the abyssal flame’s heat and was now freezing even harder.
Oh for a stout stick or a heavy rock, but no trees grew on the plateau and the only rock was solid bedrock. Her one hope was the flame itself. She backed towards the brink, the cold freezing
her muddy clothes, leaving a good pace between herself and the edge so she wouldn’t slip in. Would Phrune recognise the danger? That depended on whether he had any intelligence left or was just a corpse animated by his master’s Arts.
He rose slowly to his feet, dripping mud, and came at her. Maelys moved along the rim so he would have to approach from the side, which would give her the best chance of knocking him in. He could do the same to her, of course, unless Phrune had something worse in mind.
He moved sideways so as to come at her head-on, which suggested that there was some intelligence at work within him. She backed around the rim, desperately trying to think of a way to finish him. He had endless patience, but she had little time. Vivimord was probably attacking Flydd right now.
The ground was uneven here, consisting of the hollows of pools drained when the flame had burst up through them – some baked hard, others with just a firm crust over deep, soft ooze – and the head-high banks between the pools. She climbed the bank behind her, slid down the other side, crossed the next dry pool and clambered up the bank after that, onto its edge. Maelys was backing across it when she felt the ground crumbling under her feet. The other side had been undermined and had fallen away, leaving a thin crust of moss and earth with nothing supporting it.
She moved to the brink of the flame shaft, then jumped off the undermined bank to the hard base of the pond, and waited. Shortly Phrune clawed his way to the top, saw her below, and stopped. She moved backwards but he remained where he was. Did he suspect a trick?
She took another step backwards, trying to stare at him fearfully, which wasn’t hard. Alive or dead, Phrune was terrifying. Another step.
He moved at last and his right foot came down on the undermined section, which crumbled beneath him. Phrune toppled, fell to the floor of the pond, but to her dismay landed solidly on his stubby feet. She ran at him, put her hands against his chest and shoved as hard as she could.
He fell backwards towards the flame but, as he was going over, one flailing hand caught her shirt and pulled her with him, and Maelys was already off-balance. She dropped to her knees and jammed them into the ground, praying that the fabric would give, but her shirt tore down to a seam and it held.
He teetered on the brink, trying to pull himself towards her, but Maelys could feel her knees slipping under his greater weight. He swayed forwards, backwards, forwards again and with the recklessness of desperation she propelled herself up, drove her head into his belly as hard as she could, then threw herself backwards.
His insides made a disgusting sloshing noise and began to slide out of his mouth, but his fingers relaxed on her shirt and he toppled into the freezing white flame. She watched him fall, squinting against the glare, until he was out of sight, surely burning to ash and gone forever.
Maelys’s heart was clattering and she could barely stand up, but she had to get to the obelisk. Colm was halfway up it, swinging at a flock of bladder-bats, while the obelisk was surrounded by long glassy red spirals. Flydd’s shadow realm spell must be working after all.
She was heading for it when the flame gave a series of belches and a transparent figure rose out of it. No, a series of identical figures, five of them, each the image of dead Phrune. They swung around until they formed a line, their ruined mouths opened in the same moment, and they broke into silent laughter.
NINETEEN
Flydd was exhausted, as though all the power he’d used so far had been drawn from his own bones. He felt quite hollowed out, yet still the spiral had not solidified to protect them. Why not? Was Jal-Nish blocking him until he could get all his forces into place?
Colm, who was balanced on the tip of the obelisk, drenched in frozen blood and frosted fragments of bladder-bat, could barely hold his sword arm up. The creatures kept coming, and above them six flappeters flew in tight circles, waiting their chance. The advancing army was only a few hundred paces away, struggling through the trackless swamp. Another few minutes and they would be here.
‘If you want a fight, Jal-Nish, you’ll get one!’ Flydd roared at the sky. ‘You were never my equal in the old days and you’re not now.’
‘Don’t provoke him,’ Colm croaked. ‘It’s a hollow boast, anyway, since you all ran away from him ten years ago.’
‘Do your own job and don’t tell me how to do mine.’
Colm propped himself up on his sword, momentarily, then struck wearily at another bladder-bat.
‘I need more power,’ said Flydd. ‘More and more and more, and curse the consequences.’
He staggered back to the freezing flame and thrust his blade into it, praying that the metal could take the strain. The blade shrilled like hot iron thrust into a quenching trough, and as he returned he could feel its power dissolving the barrier that had been blocking him all this time. The spiral arms, now full of trapped fog, were starting to solidify. The one closest to the chthonic flame was almost set, though the other arms and the centre were still open.
Flydd climbed partway up the obelisk, whose upper two-thirds angled out the top of the dome. ‘Colm! Get inside.’
‘The flappeters are coming. I’ve got to hold them off.’
‘You can’t fight flappeters with a sword, and once the spiral sets, you’ll be stuck outside.’
And so would Nish and Maelys, if they were still alive, but it was fruitless agonising about that. If he and Colm got away, at least they would have saved something from the fiasco, and given the God-Emperor a small kick in the teeth.
Colm slid down the obelisk and jumped in. Flydd traced a spiral in the air with the bent blade, and the arms began to set. The portal spell was finally working.
The sky palace dropped sharply and the advancing army broke into a run. Flydd laughed aloud. ‘You’re too late, God-Emperor!’
Now to open the way into the shadow realm. He called on more power, until the white knife wailed. The chthonic flame doubled in height, and redoubled, soaring a thousand spans into the heavens.
The spirals were setting like red crystal, the outside world thinning. A jag of light stabbed down from the sky palace, striking the eastern arm, but was reflected harmlessly away.
‘The God-Emperor trembles,’ Flydd gloated. ‘He’s terrified of the chthonic flame, an unknown power to him; and afraid of what I might do with it.’ He raised his fists to the sky, white knife in hand. ‘Be very afraid, God-Emperor!’
‘Shut up!’ cried Colm. ‘You’re begging fate to strike us down.’
‘He fears the strong, Colm, but he despises the weak.’
Through the dome the chthonic flame glowed white, searing its way upwards as if to ice-weld the world of Santhenar to the endless void. Huge flakes of snow began to fall.
‘Flydd?’ choked Colm, shuddering. ‘What have you done? It’s out of control.’
‘It’ll have to burn itself out. I can’t stop it.’
‘Open the damned portal before the flame freezes us solid.’
‘I thought you didn’t want to go to the shadow realm?’
‘I don’t!’
‘And neither do I,’ Flydd muttered. ‘But I’d sooner die there than give Jal-Nish the satisfaction.’ The portal was coming. He could feel it, just out of reach, but he was still blocked from opening it.
Thump-crash. Below him, three soldiers pulled themselves up from the cavity at the base of the obelisk and began to dig their way out from under the dome. Others were trying to smash into the arms. They would fail but, if enough of them kept at it, and Jal-Nish maintained his strikes, they must eventually break through.
The Imperial Militia began to close the ring around them. Another booming cry rumbled down from the air palace.
‘ATTACK!’
Flydd tried again, expecting to be blocked, but fsssshhhtttt – a shadowy opening began to form, though not in the centre of the spiral, where it should be. It was at the end of the arm to his right, though he could not see it clearly. He shivered and rubbed his eyes, his unease rising.
‘What
is it now?’ said Colm.
‘The portal should have formed at the obelisk. Why has it formed over there?’
Colm shrugged. ‘What does it matter, as long as it works?’
‘I don’t suppose it does,’ said Flydd. ‘Come on.’
The outside was lit by a series of bright flashes coming down from the sky palace, and a tap-tapping sounded, as of a hammer on crystal. Afraid that the spiral was going to shatter under Jal-Nish’s attack, he bolted up the curving arm, which was thick with fog. The bottom of the arm was below ground here, so he was running on mud and earth.
The arms curved around the obelisk twice, but it wasn’t until he passed the terminus of another arm that he realised he’d gone up the wrong arm of the spiral.
He pressed his nose to the wall. At the end of the next arm, a clot of vapour was swirling in to a dark centre; it had to be the portal. He felt an overwhelming rush of relief, until something moved on the far side of it, human-shaped. Could it be the woman in red? It didn’t move like her.
‘Is that Jal-Nish?’ said Colm.
‘Don’t think so,’ Flydd grunted, now regretting his shouted challenge. If Jal-Nish stood between him and the portal, he’d failed. He couldn’t fight the God-Emperor.
The mist thickened until Flydd couldn’t see anything. But surely Jal-Nish wouldn’t risk himself; he would have sent a powerful mancer to block the way.
As he ran back to the centre, each of Jal-Nish’s blasts was like hammer blows that shook the spiral, and it was growing hot from all that expended power.
‘It can’t take much more, Colm. And neither can I.’
‘I thought you said the spiral would lock everything out.’
‘Any normal attack. Not an army with all the power of Reaper behind it.’
He reached the centre, where the portal should have formed, and entered the next arm, the correct one. Dozens of soldiers had pushed between the spiral arms and were attacking the sides; others had climbed on top and were trying to smash it in with hammers and war axes. They grimaced and brandished their weapons at him. He tried to ignore them, but more troops were running up all the time, along with robed battle mancers and grim, grey-skinned scriers with wisp-watchers on their backs. They would be sending everything they saw to Gatherer, and Jal-Nish would see it more clearly than if he were here.