The Curse on the Chosen (The Song of the Tears Book 2)

by Ian Irvine

  Their mating made a racket that must have been audible a league away; such roaring, bellowing, grunting and bleating Maelys had never heard before. Their pores issued more intoxicating vapours until the crown was shrouded in a green-tinged mist; vile-smelling gunge dripped from their gaping mouths, and their tails thrashed so wildly that a windstorm of shredded leaves drifted down. The whole tree was shaking as Maelys scrambled from branch to branch, occasional flashes from the male’s tail lighting up the forest floor.

  ‘Hold him steady.’ Bel’s voice was barely audible above the racket. ‘I’ll do the rest.’

  Maelys had no choice but to trust her, though she could not imagine what Bel wanted, or what she was planning to do to them. But if Bel collapsed, or faded away, Maelys had no hope of getting Flydd to safety before the troops arrived.

  Slipping on the wet bark, they slid down into a fork just wide enough to hold all three of them. Bel was no more than a shadow slumped against the trunk, breathing shallowly.

  ‘Are you all right?’ said Maelys.

  ‘Too weak – can’t hold myself here …’

  Why not? Maelys didn’t have a clue what was the matter with Bel. Above, the bellowing appeared to be coming to a climax. A rainbow ray briefly penetrated the clouds of shredded bark and leaves, revealing thin grey strands dangling towards them and oozing down the trunk. Maelys shuddered.

  ‘On!’ With a gasp of pain, Bel resolidified, took Flydd over her shoulder and scrambled down, one-handed. Maelys followed, feeling for every foothold, for she could no longer see anything.

  The tree shook. ‘Aah!’ Bel cried weakly.

  There was a rustle and a thump. Flydd groaned. Maelys reached the ground and groped around in the dark. Flydd lay on his face in a thick bed of dry leaves, but Bel had vanished.

  Maelys felt his back. Bel’s healing spell had scarred over the wound, though the area was inflamed and she could feel something hard underneath – a crossbow bolt. The moment they reached somewhere safe it would have to come out. She hauled him to his feet.

  ‘Can you walk?’

  ‘Have to, won’t I?’ he said limply, sagging on her shoulder. ‘Where’s – Bel?’

  ‘Drawn back where she came from, I suppose. Where do we go from here?’

  ‘Don’t know.’

  ‘We’ve got to get away, fast. That scrier called for help and it won’t be long in coming.’

  And wherever Bel had conjured the gigantic male from, it was a staggering feat of mancery that would not have gone unnoticed. Their position was hopeless, for Flydd was too heavy to carry.

  ‘This way,’ said a voice from the darkness. ‘Hurry.’

  Maelys’s knees sagged with relief, for it was Colm, and few men were more at home in forests than he was. Realising that she still held the amulet in her free hand, she weighed up whether to keep it or not. No, Rurr-shyve would undoubtedly come after it and to escape they needed all the help they could get. She tossed it into a bank of leaves. Yet even if they got away, could they trust their good fortune? Jal-Nish might simply be waiting for Colm to lead him to the trove.

  ‘Xervish?’ Maelys said that afternoon, looking over her shoulder to check that Colm wasn’t in earshot. He was twenty paces back, down on hands and knees, drinking from the rivulet they’d just crossed.

  Flydd grunted. Every movement caused him pain and his cheeks had a rosy, feverish glow. He seemed mortally embarrassed that he’d been taken in by Bel and would not meet her eyes. She didn’t want to talk about last night, either, but she had to.

  ‘About Bel …’ she said tentatively. ‘How could you –?’

  ‘I don’t want to discuss it. I must have been out of my mind to let one of Jal-Nish’s mancers get so close to me.’

  She realised suddenly that, because Flydd had been under the enchantment, he didn’t know what Bel had done to effect their escape. ‘I don’t think she was –’

  ‘No more! Don’t ever mention her name again.’

  He looked so fierce that she moved away hastily.

  ‘Surr,’ she said quietly.

  ‘Go away,’ he gritted.

  She went.

  ‘What’s Bel up to?’ Flydd muttered. ‘Or rather, what has Jal-Nish put her up to? Was everything that happened at Mist-murk Mountain part of his plan, too, even the woman in red? And if it was, what is he trying to get me to do that he dares not do himself?’

  ‘This is it,’ Colm said the following morning, as they trudged out of the trees onto a bank of pale gravel and saw two towering buttresses of white limestone ahead, like a wall with a slot cut through it, with the river tumbling over a shallow sill between them. ‘We’re definitely in Dunnet now, and I’m sure this is the right valley.’

  Bel’s healing charm must have continued doing its work, for Flydd had perked up during the night, though he winced with every step and she often noticed him feeling the arrow wound. ‘The test will come when we enter the valley,’ he said, ‘though it looks like cave country.’

  ‘The test will be getting out again,’ Maelys muttered.

  The only way in was along a narrow, water-washed ledge on the right-hand side of the stream. It ran up and down, then curved around the base of the buttress. On the left-hand side, the racing river tore at the broken rock.

  ‘A few well-placed troops could keep an army out,’ Colm said with satisfaction as they headed in.

  ‘If we had them,’ said Flydd. ‘Ah, I remember now. An army tried to attack this valley once, though they didn’t attempt to force the entrance. They came over the razor-topped ridge.’ He shivered in the cold wind blowing down the river, and fell silent.

  To left and right, the valley walls consisted of layers of cliffs, one above another, separated by steep tree-clad slopes. The valley floor was gloomy, for no sun reached it at this time of the year. Maelys could see dozens of caves, several close to the river at the base of the lowest cliff, but most in the higher cliff layers.

  Over the next few hours they searched every cave they came to, but Flydd detected no illusions, perpetual or otherwise.

  ‘It could take weeks just to search this one valley,’ Maelys said wearily, ‘and what if it’s the wrong one? There could be a hundred valleys just like it.’

  Colm wasn’t daunted. ‘I’ve waited most of my life for this day. I’ll search ten thousand caves if I have to.’

  Day after day they climbed up and down to check the caves, camping in them at night and hiding their tiny cooking fires with screens of woven reeds, but there was no sign of the enemy. Jal-Nish has to be holding his troops back, Maelys thought. There’s no way his scriers wouldn’t have found our trail by now.

  They continued, working their way ever upstream, and now in the deep, narrow valley the forest closed in on them. The trees were even taller here, the air over the water cold and misty, and the valley had a dank, silent air.

  ‘I don’t like this place,’ said Maelys, standing by the dark stream and pulling her coat around her. ‘It feels as though we’re being watched. There could be an army hidden up above and we’d never know.’

  ‘There is, but it can’t harm us,’ said Colm enigmatically. ‘Let’s try that one.’ He pointed up the flank of the valley.

  Flydd grunted and led them up the slope, but Maelys’s unease grew with every scrambling step.

  He topped a small rise and stopped abruptly. ‘This is the place, all right.’

  Maelys came up beside him, cold inside and out; Colm stopped on his other side. Just ahead was a vast tangle of white, brown and yellow objects – many long and thin, others round as balls. She took a couple of steps forwards and her teeth began to chatter; she could not stop them. ‘But they’re bones – human bones! Hundreds of them.’

  ‘Tens of thousands of bones,’ said Flydd.

  Colm went pale, turned away abruptly and sat down, head in hands. ‘It didn’t seem so bad when it was just an old tale.’

  Flydd walked to the base of the pile, where he prodded some rib bones wi
th his foot. She could not read his expression.

  ‘Xervish?’ said Maelys. ‘What happened?’

  ‘Two centuries and more ago, near the end of the Time of the Mirror, Yggur and Mendark, two of the very greatest mancers in all the Histories, led an army here secretly to take back a device held by Faelamor. They employed every concealment known to their separate Arts, and also brought a team of master illusionists to hide the army and confuse her.’

  ‘But something went wrong?’

  ‘The plan failed, utterly. Faelamor discovered them long before they got here. She broke the concealment and created a counter illusion that was too much for the illusionists. Most died, the rest went insane, and she lured the army to its doom. She marched it over a cliff – that cliff,’ he pointed up the sheer limestone face of the upper cliff ‘– in the impenetrable fog.’

  Maelys could see that day in her mind’s eye and felt sick with the horror of it. ‘Why did a whole army have to die? If she was the greatest illusionist of all, why didn’t she hide whatever they were looking for until they gave up?’

  ‘I expect she wanted to teach them a lesson – that all their might, and indeed the towering Arts of Yggur and Mendark, were as nought compared to her mastery. Two thousand men fell to their deaths that hour, and neither Yggur nor Mendark ever recovered from the defeat.’

  Maelys closed her eyes, but she could imagine it all too clearly. The terror of the fall, the agony of their smashed bones, the ghastly waiting of any injured survivors to die.

  ‘This valley hasn’t forgotten either,’ said Colm soberly. ‘Not a single plant grows within the boneyard.’

  ‘Plants will, one day,’ said Flydd. ‘Nothing lasts forever.’

  ‘Save perpetual illusions,’ said Colm.

  ‘Perhaps. Faelamor’s cave would not have been far from where the army fell. To the right, I’d say.’

  For a few minutes, they followed a trail worn by cloven-hoofed animals, up and down, around a series of fallen boulders, then along the base of the cliff. To their right the ground fell away steeply towards the river; ahead it became a sloping apron before a black opening in the white rock.

  ‘That’s the cave,’ said Colm hoarsely. ‘It’s got to be.’ His eyes were streaming and he did not bother to hide it.

  Maelys did not follow at once, for again she had the unnerving feeling that they were being watched. She slid behind a tree, looking up the valley and down, as far as she could see. Nothing moved in her field of view, but with all the cover here, Jal-Nish could have an army hidden close by. Would he make his move now that the cave had been found, or wait until the illusion had been dispelled?

  She followed Flydd up to the cave and stopped just inside until her eyes adjusted. The cave was well protected from wind and weather, while a natural groove in its ceiling, somewhat soot-blackened, would have helped to funnel out smoke from a cooking fire. The floor was scattered with charcoal from camp fires of long ago and the dry dung of a variety of small animals. She saw nothing else.

  ‘This place doesn’t look grand enough for the leader of all the Faellem,’ said Maelys. ‘It looks like any other cave.’

  ‘The Faellem lived in harmony with nature,’ Flydd said absently. ‘They did not care excessively for possessions, or built things. As long as they were comfortable, the cave’s simplicity would have appealed to them.’

  Colm paced back and forth, his back bowed and his shoulders slumped. ‘I don’t think there’s anything left.’

  ‘Faelamor was a master illusionist,’ Flydd reminded him. ‘The greatest that ever lived.’

  ‘Then break her illusion, if it still exists.’

  Flydd didn’t move. ‘It’s not that easy.’

  ‘You haven’t tried! I’ve been brought here under false pretences.’

  ‘Oh, don’t be so pathetic! You nagged me to come here, if you recall, though I told you more than once that I might not be able to break her illusion.’

  ‘I’m sorry. Please try.’

  ‘Colm, I can’t yet tell if there is an illusion. I’ve got to have something to start with, and it all takes time.’

  ‘Then why did you come?’ Colm said, very controlled. ‘Why allow me to hope?’

  ‘Because you begged me.’ Flydd turned back to his study of the floor, and again Maelys noticed a faint gleam in his eyes.

  ‘Then it’s over,’ Colm said dully. ‘I’ve nothing left to hope for.’

  No one said anything. Nothing Maelys could say would give him any comfort.

  ‘I think you’re looking for this.’ The woman’s voice came from behind them.

  TWENTY-NINE

  Maelys spun around. A woman not much taller than herself stood at the entrance to the cave, her hair tumbling halfway down her back. She was silhouetted against the light, so her features could not be seen, and at first Maelys assumed it must be Faelamor herself, back from the dead, for the woman held out a small ebony bracelet.

  ‘Colm?’ she said in a dry little voice. ‘Colm?’

  Not Faelamor. Colm swallowed noisily, tried to speak but nothing emerged save a hoarse croak. He tried again. ‘Ketila?’

  ‘Yes. It’s me.’ She just stood there, staring at him as if at the rising sun.

  ‘I thought you were dead,’ Colm whispered. ‘Though I never gave up hope. Is little Fransi …?’

  Ketila’s throat quivered. ‘Eaten by a lyrinx,’ she said slowly, deliberately, as if she hadn’t spoken in a long time.

  He staggered and caught blindly at Maelys’s shoulder. ‘Oh, oh! But … it would have been quick. She would not have suffered …’

  ‘Fransi suffered.’ There was a whole world of torment in her words. ‘Oh yes.’

  ‘Why wasn’t I there? If only I’d been there –’

  ‘It would have eaten you too.’

  ‘At least my worries would be over.’ Then, softly, ‘What about Mother and Father?’ He was pleading with Ketila; please, please say that they’re alive.

  ‘They died soon after we lost you, escaping from the slave camp. They attacked the lyrinx that had taken Fransi, with their bare hands. They had no chance.’

  Though Colm must have expected it, he shrank down on himself, each death a blow hammering him deeper into the dirt. He swayed, his nails digging in and out of Maelys’s shoulder. She could not bear to imagine what that night must have been like.

  ‘No chance.’ His arm fell to his side. ‘All the heart had gone out of them long ago. They would have been glad to die.’ He went forwards, slowly.

  Ketila moved backwards and the light from outside fell on her face. She was not yet thirty and might once have been pretty, but was now thin and drawn. Her skin was weathered from sun and wind, grief had etched deep lines around her mouth, and her eyes had an unnervingly blank stare.

  ‘What are you doing here, Kettie?’

  ‘Don’t call me that,’ she said sharply, fighting back tears.

  ‘Sorry, Ketila.’

  ‘I can’t bear to be reminded of the good old days.’

  ‘In that terrible camp?’ he exclaimed.

  ‘I was happy there. We were all together; we had each other.’

  ‘I never thought of it like that,’ he said quietly.

  ‘I searched everywhere for you that night,’ said Ketila. ‘And for weeks and months afterwards, but no one had seen a twelve-year-old boy answering your description.’

  ‘Nor a fifteen-year-old girl like you,’ said Colm. ‘Nor Fransi; nor Mother and Father. I never gave up looking, but I had lost hope.’

  ‘I knew you’d find your way to Dunnet eventually, if you were still alive.’

  ‘How long have you been here?’

  ‘Eight years.’

  ‘All by yourself?’

  ‘Since I lost everyone, I prefer to be alone … In the war, I learned that no one but your family can be trusted. I went through a lot in the years it took me to find this place.’

  Maelys could only imagine it – a young woman, travelli
ng alone for years through the lawless chaos of those dark times.

  ‘Oh, Ketila,’ said Colm, and took her in his arms.

  Ketila kindled a small smokeless fire between the boulders down the slope, out of sight of the bone field, and they ate smoked fish from her stores, and drank sweet-sour tea made from a local herb. Afterwards Flydd walked away towards the bones, but Maelys remained by the fire. She had never seen Colm so alive, not even during those brief weeks together on the way to the plateau. He kept jumping up and sitting down again, pacing between the rocks, staring hungrily at his sister and looking away again, and all the while beaming as though he could not believe his good fortune.

  Ketila maintained her reserve. Mostly she stared into the fire, lost in her thoughts like a lifelong hermit. Occasionally she looked up at Colm and, momentarily, there was a glow in her eyes.

  Maelys sat well to the side, keeping watch. She didn’t want to intrude; besides, the enemy could come down the cliffs, or up the river, at any moment and she wasn’t going to be taken by surprise again.

  ‘I felt so guilty,’ said Ketila. ‘I still do.’

  ‘Why?’ said Colm. ‘You never did anything wrong.’

  ‘I’m the oldest. I should have been looking after you and Fransi.’

  ‘You couldn’t look after me – I was always in trouble and I never did what I was told. And I forced Mother and Father to take Nish in. If only I hadn’t.’ He bowed his head.

  ‘What difference would that have made?’ she said in the brisk fashion of an older sister. It was the first trace of animation Maelys had seen in her since dinner.

  ‘If I hadn’t, Nish would have been taken into custody at once, and maybe the lyrinx –’

  ‘They didn’t come for him, Colm; they didn’t know he was there. It was the war – just the stupid war – and without Nish we might never have won it.’ Her eyes shone for a moment. ‘I was quite taken with him once, you know.’

  Maelys sat up. Ketila had known Nish back when he was Maelys’s age – would he fit the legend, or fall terribly short? Had Nish done something to make her mistrust humanity so?