by Ian Irvine
Klarm appeared, pointing the brassy knoblaggie at him. Treacherous Klarm, and if he couldn’t be trusted, no one could. Win or lose, you’re all alone, Flydd.
Yellow light stabbed from the knoblaggie, to bounce harmlessly off the wall. Flydd put it out of mind and jogged on. Each spiral arm wrapped around the centre twice, so he had to make another two circles before he reached the end.
Running through the sticky mire was exhausting; he could barely lift his feet. He dropped back to a walk, following the right-hand wall so he would know how far he’d gone, and trying not to look at the hundreds of brutal faces lined up along the outside. He felt like a rat in a maze, with his nemesis awaiting him at the other end.
The fog was so thick here that he practically had to swim through it, swinging his arms and legs against its uncanny, clinging resistance. Flydd couldn’t tell if Colm were still behind him; with the constant blows on the spiral he couldn’t even hear his own thoughts. He passed a scarred face he recognised from the previous turn, then Klarm, who had his hands out as if pleading with him. Flydd turned his face away.
It was taking so long! A couple of minutes later he went past the same faces again, and then again, as though he were on a treadmill to nowhere. Jal-Nish’s arts must have stretched the spiral arm out, or twisted it into an endless loop. Suddenly afraid, he broke into a run, squelching through the boggy mud, and finally broke into fresh, untrodden ooze. Whatever had been restraining him before had let him go, but why?
He was nearing the end of the arm, dread growing with every step. It was darker here, for the end was completely surrounded by troops, each man trying to be first to smash a way in and claim the prize. Even the strongest mancery could be overcome by brute force, if enough of it could be brought to bear. It was Jal-Nish’s strength, and Flydd’s weakness.
He went on, step by slow step, holding his knife out. Seeing a moving shadow ahead, he went for it, and the white tip of his blade was just an ell from the man’s belly when he recognised him.
‘Nish? What the blazes are you doing here?’
Nish managed a slurred grunt. His eyes were dull, his arms hung limp; he looked as though he’d been drugged, or spell-dazed. The mist swirled and only then did Flydd make out the baby-smooth arm around Nish’s neck, and the long face marred by that black excrescence on his cheek. It hadn’t been Jal-Nish blocking him, but Vivimord! Vivimord had stopped him from opening the portal until he could get into position to take it.
‘Open it, Flydd,’ he said quietly.
‘So you can escape with Nish.’ Flydd tasted the bitterness of abject failure. Why hadn’t he realised who his real enemy was? ‘I’ll destroy us all before I give in to you.’
‘No one goes through the agony of renewal only to throw it all away. I’ve beaten you, Flydd. Open the portal.’
How Flydd wanted to wipe the twisted smile off his face. ‘You don’t know me at all,’ he spat.
He dared not attack Vivimord directly, for that would put Nish at risk. What if he blasted the portal wide open? It might create an opportunity to attack. The chance was slim but he had to take it.
Drawing the power of the chthonic flame from the white blade, he visualised the entrance to the shadow realm the way Rassitifer had taught him, and hurled power into the misty vortex behind Vivimord. It faded from black to pearl. Vivimord moved towards it, dragging Nish with him. He wasn’t struggling; Nish hardly knew he was there.
Mist began to whirl into the vortex; the portal was creeping open, the shadow realm just a leap away. ‘Colm?’ Flydd said softly.
‘Here,’ came from directly behind him.
‘Be ready for anything.’
Though Flydd had little experience of portals, he knew that no two were alike, and that it was impossible to predict what would happen when this one opened. Might it suck them through, or would there still be some barrier to be forced before they could enter the shadow realm?
‘And after we go through,’ he added, ‘hang onto me.’
‘Why?’ said Colm.
‘Because aftersickness will be so bad I might not be able to stand up.’ Opening a portal required a stronger Art than he’d ever used before.
The portal opened with a roar and freezing air blasted out, churning the mist. Flydd, blown off balance, slipped and fell. Vivimord let go of Nish and somehow – Flydd had no idea how – tore the portal from his control.
Klarm’s face appeared through the wall; he pressed his knoblaggie against it and strained with all his strength, but fruitlessly. He stared at the knoblaggie in dismay, then tried again. Nothing. Flydd’s heart stopped for a good five seconds, for he knew what it meant. The chthonic flame was overwhelming all other powers and, if the tears failed, even for a second, it could be catastrophic.
The soldiers resumed their attack with greater fury. Flydd tried desperately to regain the portal but he’d done too much, too soon, with a body that still didn’t feel like his, and he had nothing left.
And Vivimord was too strong; he’d been healed at the cursed flame and its power flowed in his veins; those black flames still dripped from his fingertips. He was stealing the portal, directing it to some unknown destination, and Flydd knew he’d never get it back.
In one last desperate effort he snatched Colm’s sword and leapt at his enemy, but Vivimord turned aside, casually tossed a loop of mist over Flydd and pulled it tight around his neck.
Nish was given a hard shove in the back and disappeared into the portal. He was gone; lost. With a tweak of Vivimord’s fingers, the mist noose pulled ever tighter. Flydd dropped the sword and tried to force his fingers under the noose but there was nothing to grip; it was as intangible as the mist it had been made from, yet it was cutting into his neck and crushing his windpipe. It was the simplest of spells, one that a journeyman sorcerer could break, but in his powerless state Flydd could do nothing to save himself.
‘Colm, help,’ he gasped, falling to his knees, but Colm had a silvery mist-noose around his own throat.
With ironic salutes to Flydd, to Klarm and to the sky palace high above, Vivimord backed towards the portal. He’d won. But then, as he was about to step into it, the mist stirred on the other side of the vortex, at the tip of the spiral arm, and a battered, mud-covered apparition staggered out.
‘Maelys?’ Flydd subvocalised.
Vivimord looked up sharply, as if he’d sensed something, though Flydd still had the taphloid in his pocket and it must have partly shielded her aura.
Maelys had eyes for only one man. Her young features twisted, she sprang, raised a octopede fang high and stabbed it into the middle of Vivimord’s back. He staggered and fell to one knee but she followed him down, pressing the fang in and twisting it as far as it would go.
‘Die, you cur!’ she gasped.
He swung at her but she squeezed a sac attached to the fang; yellow venom oozed out from around the wound in his back and he squealed like a pig in a slaughterhouse. One swinging fist struck her in the face, and as she went down, the long fang tore free.
Maelys collapsed, holding her jaw, which hung at an odd angle. Vivimord staggered two steps into the portal, his knees wobbling uncontrollably, and tried to close it behind him. The mist-nooses turned back to mist; Flydd could breathe again. He drew on the power of the chthonic flame – it really hurt this time – and tried to stop the portal from closing. If he could hold it for another minute the venom might bring Vivimord down. The zealot’s left leg had buckled and his face was distorted in agony, but he fought back and the mist tightened around Flydd’s throat again. He had to ignore it; had to hold the portal with his last breath. He strained but instead felt the most extraordinary sensation, as if the spiral were being pulled apart.
And it was. The four arms shifted slightly, then separated into a pair of two-armed spirals. He was in one, Vivimord and Nish in the other, and there was no way to get to them. Vivimord’s spiral spun until it became a blur, and vanished.
‘They’re gone!’ Flydd cr
oaked, watching the mist noose drift away and dissolve back into the air. ‘We’ve lost Nish now. By the time Vivimord is finished with him, there’ll be nothing left.’
The hammering on the spiral, which had stopped during the struggle, resumed in greater fury.
‘They’re breaking through,’ said Colm, rubbing his throat.
The red crystal wall was cracked in several places and could not last much longer. Flydd dragged a flask of chthonic fire from his pocket, unstoppered it and forced the remaining portal open a crack.
Not yet. I’m not ready.
There wasn’t time to worry about voices in his head; the woman in red had been using him all this time. No more! He forced the portal wide open.
Noooo! she screamed again; again too late.
A vast surge of force burned through him, as if he’d linked the tiny flame wisping up from the flask to the column of chthonic fire blasting into the sky. I’m back! Flydd thought. I’m a real mancer again. He took a step into the portal but, remembering how quickly Rassitifer had taken that fatal injury in the shadow realm, Flydd froze.
‘Wass ’at?’ mumbled Maelys, holding her jaw. Colm was staring up at the sky, open-mouthed.
Flydd made out a massed scream of terror, so loud that it penetrated the solid walls of the spiral, and looked out to see the soldiers, mancers, scriers, and even Klarm, running for their lives.
What had he done? A moving reflection flashed across the spiral and the dreadful realisation struck him. The sky palace, suddenly robbed of the power which held its enormous weight suspended in mid-air, was falling directly towards them, for the chthonic flame had overwhelmed the power of the tears which held it up.
‘Get out of the way, Flydd!’ shrieked Colm, heaving Maelys to her feet and trying to push into the portal.
The army was doomed, and Klarm as well, for the sky palace was going to smash the centre of the plateau to smithereens and blast everything off it in a hurricane of shattered rock. Not even the spiral could resist that kind of impact. Nothing could.
But still Flydd hesitated. Without his own Art, he would be practically defenceless in the shadow realm. He could not use the Arts he’d been given by the woman, for they relied on the flame, and once he passed through the portal it would be beyond his reach.
‘Flydd!’ Colm screeched.
Was a quick death here worse than a lingering one in the shadow realm? He had only seconds to choose. Suddenly, with a scream of agony, she was in his mind, a part of him as she had been once before.
Thrice-cursed fool. You’ll owe me a lifetime of service for this.
Flydd felt hot threads weaving back and forth across the centre of his head, as if those parts of his mind separated since renewal were finally being rejoined, and he felt more of his Art return.
Go, you fool. I’m with you now.
The sky palace was hurtling down, directly at them. He wasn’t sure he had enough Art to survive the shadow realm, but she was within him still; she might. Holding the two flasks of chthonic fire out, he drew power and opened the portal the way he had learned from her.
As Flydd stumbled through, he looked up. Moments before impact, a wing-ray lifted off from the deck of the sky palace, a small figure riding on its back. Jal-Nish was abandoning his army, his servants and even his mancers, and running for his life.
The portal opened all the way and Colm leapt through with Maelys. Flydd lurched after her, and the last he saw of Mistmurk Mountain was the sky palace thundering towards the flame, driving it back down the monstrous shaft, then slamming into the plateau so hard that it rifted it from one side to the other. The scene was obscured in a pall of mud, steam, dust and the pulverised bodies of the God-Emperor’s entire Imperial Militia, three thousand men.
Colm and Maelys were tumbling head over heels ahead of him, carried towards the shadow realm’s grim, thorn-wreathed entrance, through which Flydd could see shades swooping and revenants leering in anticipation. They looked even stronger than he’d imagined. He swallowed and tried to draw away; he wasn’t ready. Neither his memories nor his Art were coming back quickly enough.
He felt her sigh of relief – At last! – as she went with him – but then her horror as she realised where he was going.
Not there! What are you doing to me?
Pain sheared through his skull; the portal was torn from his control again. No, he thought. Not this time. Whatever the woman in red wanted, he did not. He fought back but she beat him off, wrenching the portal out of his grip.
Way behind him he could just make out its distorted opening, wreathed in blasted chthonic fire. He drew on it and the portal was his again. It snapped shut and he felt her separate from him agonisingly, as if a healing wound had been torn open.
Not yet! she screamed for the third time. Not there!
Lightning flashed all around and the entrance to the shadow realm disappeared, replaced by utter blackness. Flydd felt more pain, worse than before, but this time it was her pain until her presence completely separated from him and he felt her spinning away, her control slipping. She was falling out of the portal, lost, gone.
He rolled over and over in the air. ‘Colm? Maelys?’
No answer. He flashed by a woman’s face, her face. She was clawing at a transparent wall from the other side, and he sensed her terrible anguish.
You’ve failed me, you fool.
‘And you used me!’ he snapped.
I saved you. Do you think I went through all this so you could leave me behind?
‘What was I supposed to have done differently? Where are you, anyway?’
He was carried past and did not hear her reply, if she made one, and she faded from sight. He continued to fall through darkness for a long time, until, without warning, he went sliding across a smooth, cool surface and came to a halt not far from Colm. Maelys lay a few paces further on. A small pool of light bathed them, but beyond it he could see nothing.
‘Are we in the shadow realm?’ whispered Colm.
Flydd rolled onto his back. The floor was black and as hard and smooth as glass, and he knew where they were though he had never been here before. It was the place he’d seen in her scrying cup down at the abyssal flame.
Maelys sat up, holding her dislocated jaw with both hands. She frowned ferociously, then jerked hard and forced her jaw back into place, biting back tears of agony.
‘Where are we?’ said Colm, getting up. ‘This doesn’t look like the shadow realm. Not the way you described it.’
‘I’m dreadfully afraid,’ Flydd said haltingly, ‘that we’ve ended up in a far worse place.’
‘Where?’ mumbled Maelys.
‘The Nightland.’
‘But,’ said Colm, ‘isn’t that –?’
‘It’s the place where the greatest of all the Charon, Rulke, was imprisoned for a thousand years, and not even his genius, nor his mancery, could get him out.’
PART TWO
THE TOWER OF A
THOUSAND STEPS
TWENTY
Save for the roaring green flames, and later the hissing, spitting white ones, Nish knew little about Vivimord dragging him up the stairs and halls of Mistmurk Mountain and out onto the plateau. Once there, Nish saw the zealot glaring at him, and the needle pricks in the back of his hand stung venomously; he tried to run but his numb feet would not move; he fell but felt nothing as he hit the ground …
Later he remembered, though distantly, as if through a spinning hole, Maelys stabbing a curved fang into Vivimord’s back and him squealing like a pig. Nish would have cheered, had he been able to speak.
His memories of the time after that were equally fragmentary, for Nish was too dazed by Vivimord’s ensnaring spells. He vaguely recalled whirling through a black, empty space, then being pushed out into darkness and smelling the humid odour of rainforest. A river poured over rapids nearby, and people were talking. The portal was still open nearby; he could hear air rushing through it all the while.
Later he caught a
glimpse of Vivimord, stripped to the waist, scrubbing frenziedly at the wound in his back. Nish’s burned hand flared with pain, he gasped and an elderly woman bent over him and spooned something bitter into his mouth. Her face looked familiar, though he could not remember where he’d seen her before. She began dressing the burn on his hand …
Two peasants with dirt under their fingernails hauled him to the portal and he was carried to a stony hilltop where the wind blew wild and hot, though it was the middle of the night. The old woman was dressing his hand again, frowning at what she saw and muttering phrases over it. Despite her efforts it throbbed all the time, save where he’d rubbed Vivimord’s blood into it. Those patches were cold, prickly and unbearably itchy, but his other hand was strapped to his chest and he could not scratch.
His wits felt dull; he was unable to follow any train of thought for more than a minute. The one thing Nish remembered clearly was that mortifying encounter with Maelys in the bedchamber. He’d thought she wanted him, and he had certainly desired her, until she broke Vivimord’s enchantment and escaped. Clearly she, a slip of a girl, was a lot stronger than he was.
‘Maelys,’ he said, not realising that he was thinking aloud, ‘how could I have been so wrong about you?’
‘It’s too late for her!’ the zealot hissed in his ear. ‘She struck me, Deliverer; she’s doomed to the most agonising death-in-life I can come up with.’
Vivimord’s teeth were bared, the blemish on his cheek was a darker purple than before, and he had a hand pressed to the fang wound. He winced, then slid his hand under his shirt and across his belly, where the skin crackled. Every day he seemed to be suffering more, and less able to endure it.