by Ian Irvine
‘Of course!’ Flydd snapped.
‘I suggest you reflect upon it.’ He turned away. ‘See how it burns through the ice, Chissmoul?’
She shivered. ‘It’s as though it’s feeding on it.’
‘We would do well to reflect upon that as well. Come on.’
He turned away, limping from an age-old injury, then set off, his long legs taking such lengthy strides that Flydd found himself trotting to keep up. That irritated him too, and he dropped back to a fast walk.
Yggur chuckled.
‘What’s so funny?’ Flydd snapped.
‘You, Flydd. You’re a treat. I haven’t felt so good in all my years of imprisonment.’
‘To make you happy, I’d gleefully double them.’
‘Weakest jibe yet. You’ve lost your touch, old friend – renewal has diminished you.’
Flydd scowled, for Yggur was right. With an effort, he put his feelings to one side. They would always be rivals, yet they had to work together. They reached a buttress of solid ice, a good span thick and rounded at the base, as if it was slowly flowing and spreading out under the weight of the inner tower. Beside it the wall was thinner, no more than a couple of hand-spans.
‘Here, I think,’ said Yggur. ‘Would you agree, Chissmoul?’
She studied the wall, head to one side. ‘Yes.’
Flydd withdrew his ice flask and twisted at the stopper.
‘What’s that?’ Yggur said sharply.
‘The chthonic flame I took from Thuntunnimoe. It’s how we’ve been getting through walls and keeping ahead of the Whelm.’
Yggur held out his hand. Flydd grudgingly placed the flask in the middle of his palm. Yggur studied it warily, then carefully eased the stopper out. A tiny ice-white flame wisped up. Yggur slammed the stopper in and twisted it until it was tight.
‘Put it away, you fool. Don’t ever use it again.’
Flydd felt furiously angry, but bit down on it, for that would only be aiding the enemy. ‘I take your warning, but if it’s necessary to use it for our survival, I’ll use it.’
‘I hope you don’t live to regret it.’
‘Hadn’t you better tell him about the other one?’ said Colm, who was looking more troubled every second.
‘What other one?’ Yggur cried, spinning on one foot. His bracelets twinkled in the white firelight as though they were inset with diamonds.
There was a monumental crash behind them. The Whelm were into the first hall. ‘There isn’t time to discuss it,’ said Flydd. ‘We’ve got to move.’
Flangers drew himself upright, took the ice cudgel Flydd had left on the floor, and hobbled back along the hall to stand guard. Chissmoul and Colm went with him.
‘We’ll discuss it right now,’ said Yggur. ‘What other one?’
‘I brought the Numinator three bottles. I had no hope of gaining her cooperation unless I could give her some power she’d never seen before.’
‘And in the three bottles? Please tell me you haven’t given her the chthonic flame, Flydd.’
‘I gave her the cursed flame, the abyssal flame which feeds it and, from the greatest depth of all, the chthonic flame,’ Flydd said limply.
‘You stupid, useless fool! We’ve got to get it back.’
‘It’s too late. She must have used it already …’
Yggur followed his gaze to the wall, down which two more threads of twinkling fire were running, eating into the ice and spreading. What if it was feeding on the ice? Flydd thought.
‘What has she used it for?’ said Yggur.
Flydd gave no answer.
‘I’ve got to have power,’ muttered Yggur. ‘I feel as helpless as a child. Since you’ve got such colossal forces to lavish on our enemy, do something with these.’ He held out his wrists.
Flydd laid his hands on the bracelets, trying to sense his way into the spell-binder they contained. Feeling something shifting restlessly within them, he strained with all his might. The bracelets grew burning hot under his hands and he smelt burnt hair. They had singed the hairs on Yggur’s arms, though he did not flinch.
Flydd, feeling the strength draining out of him, jerked his hands away. ‘I don’t know if it’s helped, but I can do no more just now.’
Yggur rubbed his wrists. ‘I’ve got a trace of my power back and … it feels as though the Numinator’s hold over me has weakened. As though she’s far away …’
Flydd and Colm exchanged glances.
‘What have you done now?’ cried Yggur.
‘We think Maelys was concealing something from us, and –’
‘Who the devil is Maelys?’
Flydd explained, briefly. ‘The Numinator questioned Maelys alone last night, about the portals I’ve made. I think the Numinator has used the chthonic flame to make a portal, and has taken Maelys back to the Nightland –’
Yggur looked as though he were going to have a fit, but contained himself and said quietly, ‘The Nightland? Rulke’s prison?’
‘The same. It didn’t collapse after he left it, as everyone thought. Or if it did, it has been carefully restored, and maintained ever since, though who could do such a thing?’
‘Not I,’ said Yggur. ‘All the old human mancers on Santhenar, working together, could not have rebuilt the Nightland after the Forbidding was broken. They would not have had the power.’
‘Then who?’
‘The question is unanswerable, as is the more important question – why? And since the Numinator has already used chthonic fire, it may be too late. Once taken out of the flask it can never be put back. See how it’s eating away at the ice? If it can’t be extinguished, the roof of the inner tower will fall in on us.’
Flydd was digesting that when Yggur said sharply, ‘You said back to the Nightland. Have you been there already?’
Flydd explained that as well, and how they had come here via Dunnet, though he did not mention the mimemule. ‘The Nightland was as big a surprise –’
‘They’re coming!’ whispered Flangers, backing down the hall with the cudgel over his shoulder, ready to swing.
‘I’ve got to use the fire to get through this ice, Yggur,’ said Flydd.
‘I said no!’ Yggur put his hands on the wall, pushed, and Flydd smelt singed hair again. ‘For seven years she’s drawn on my power to hold this place together. I could not stop her, but I’ve learned how to follow the paths she’s taken with it, and how she’s used my power. If she’s truly gone, with what you’ve given me I might just …’
With gritted teeth, he strained until the bones in his arched back creaked. Lines appeared on the wall – the outlines of the blocks from which it had originally been constructed. ‘Ice, unbind.’
Water began to dribble out from the edges of the block he had his hands on. He pushed hard and, after a brief moment when it seemed the block would not budge, it glided away smoothly on a film of meltwater and fell out with a loud crash.
From the other side of the wall, a woman cried out fearfully, then Flydd heard a clamour of voices. He scrambled through the hole and held up his hands. They quieted at once.
‘I am Xervish Flydd. Some of you may know my name.’ A low, excited buzz spread through the throng before him. The light was dim, and he could make out no more than a mass of thin figures. ‘I came to Noom to get you out.’ The lie was excusable, in the circumstances. ‘The Numinator is not here at the moment … which gives us our best chance, but you must all do exactly as I say.’
Chissmoul ducked through the hole, then Flangers and Colm. Yggur was still on the other side.
‘How can we get away?’ said a scrawny man near the front. Flydd could make out no more than an enormous prow of a nose. ‘There’s five hundred leagues of snow and ice in every direction.’
A considerable exaggeration, but there was no time to argue. ‘The same way I got here,’ Flydd said. ‘Through my vast command of the Secret Arts – Arts that the God-Emperor thinks he controls – ha!’
He held up the flask so
everyone could see the swirling fire inside it. Yggur climbed through and stood up, wearing an ironic smile, though he made no move to interfere. Damn right! Flydd thought mulishly. He wears the bracelets, not me.
‘The Whelm are after us,’ he went on, ‘but they’re afraid. Their master is not here and they’re leaderless.’
‘Which means they’ll be terrified and panicky,’ said the man with the big nose. ‘And merciless.’
‘Trust me, and I’ll get you out of here,’ said Flydd weakly, knowing that he was losing them. It would never have happened in the olden days, when he had often swayed multitudes with his rhetoric.
‘A hundred and fifty of us can’t fight seven hundred armed Whelm,’ said beaky nose. ‘The Numinator treats us well enough, and it’s better to live as her slaves than die at the hands of these brutal Whelm. Go away and fight your own battles.’
Yggur, who was leaning against the wall, stood up to his full height and raised his bracelets so they caught the light of the chthonic fire, which was oozing down these walls as well.
‘You don’t know Xervish Flydd, save as a name from the past, but you do know me, and you know that my power, tapped by the Numinator through these bracelets, is all that is holding up the Tower of a Thousand Steps. The Numinator has gone – and she may never return – but Flydd has given me some of my power back. We are leaving to continue the fight against the God-Emperor, so you have no choice. Once I leave, the tower will collapse whether the Numinator returns or not.’
‘We won’t let you leave,’ said the beaky-nosed man. ‘We’re not dying just so you can get away. Take him, lads!’
A group of men at the front surged forwards and icy teeth sank into Flydd's liver – the situation was out of control and he could not think how to regain it.
Yggur didn’t move, though he stood more stiffly erect and the bracelets gave off little flashes. ‘You know better than that, Lazus,’ he said, looking to the left. ‘And you, Pordey. Don’t you?’
Two of the leaders stopped, and all the others with them.
‘He’s bluffing,’ said the beaky-nosed man. ‘He’s got no power. Take him.’
Yggur smiled grimly and extended a long arm towards him. ‘My phantom hand, an invisible hand which is an extension of this one, is going to reach in through your chest and squeeze your heart until it bursts …’
‘Go on, then,’ the beaky-nosed man said, with a knowing smile.
Yggur reached a little further and stiffened his fingers as though forcing them through something hard. The beak-nosed man gasped and clutched at his chest. Flydd heard cracking sounds, like ribs breaking, then Yggur slowly clenched his fist. His arm did not shake.
The man’s face went red, then white. His lips turned blue, he beat awkwardly at the air with his hands, then screamed as bright red blood was forced out his mouth, nostrils and eyeballs.
He collapsed to his knees, slumped forwards and fell on his face, dead before he hit the ground.
‘Was that really necessary?’ said Colm, looking sick. He opened the distance between himself and Yggur.
Yggur stared at the body as if contemplating giving its heart another squeeze. ‘He would have hindered us every step of the way,’ he said quietly, ‘if we got out at all. Now the problem is solved.’ He raised his voice. ‘Does anyone else dispute my command?’
No one answered.
‘Can you really do that?’ said Flydd. He had seen more violent death than most men, but the display left him awed, and uneasy. No one had ever understood the roots of Yggur’s strange power, nor his impossibly long life, for that matter.
‘It’s marvellous what the power of suggestion can do to an angry man with a weak heart,’ said Yggur ambiguously.
‘Then use your power to get us out of here.’
Yggur held up his braceleted wrists. ‘The Tower of a Thousand Steps is not an easy place to escape from. Its power is linked to hers.’
‘You’d better think of a way.’
‘And you’d better do something about the hole in the wall before the Whelm come through.’
‘Call the biggest of the prisoners over and help me heave the block back in.’
‘No, I need it.’
‘What on earth for?’ said Flydd.
‘Weapons!’
THIRTY-NINE
Flydd had done what he could to seal the hole with webs of ice as thick as bars, but it would not hinder the enemy long and, unfortunately, there was no other way out of the cells.
‘They’re coming!’ Flangers said hoarsely. ‘We’ll have to fight them as they come through.’ He hefted Flydd’s cudgel and stood to one side of the hole.
‘Surr,’ said Chissmoul to Yggur, ‘he’s too weak to fight. They’ll kill him in the first minute.’
‘Flangers can’t not fight, Chissmoul. He was a professional soldier; take that from him and he’ll have nothing left.’
‘If he dies, I’ll have nothing left,’ Chissmoul said, white-faced.
What could he say? Flydd eyed the ice walls, which were laced with chthonic fire now, spreading out from each oozing thread and slowly eating the surface ice away. Every so often a small chunk would fall and smash on the floor; within, the ice was honeycombed with water-filled holes.
‘How long can the inner tower hold?’ Colm said quietly.
‘I don’t think there’s any way of telling.’ Flydd wiped drops off his face. ‘Perhaps not long at all.’
‘The core of the wall is still solid,’ said Yggur. ‘It’ll last a while yet.’
He was standing over the block of ice he’d pushed out, rubbing the bracelets. ‘Now I’ve got some power, let’s see what I can do with it. For the past seven years, the Numinator has drawn upon my power to shape and strengthen her ice tower, and those skills have flowed back to me. With a little effort, I should be able to form ice with as much skill as a sculptor carves marble.’
Yggur smoothed his hands across the great block, ignoring the biting cold, and seemed to be calculating its dimensions. ‘Spears are the only weapon suited to untrained soldiers.’ He spoke to the stone, softly. ‘Split and split and split again – split eight times over.’
With a dull crack the block split in two, and each piece split again and again, eight times, until hundreds of long ice stakes went tumbling across the floor.
‘Blade tips!’ Yggur picked up one of the stakes and shaped its tip into a spearhead with his fingers. This proved a greater strain; he swayed on his feet.
Ice cracked away from the leading end of each stake to form a leaf-shaped point about a hand-span long, bladed on either side.
‘Javelins, become as adamant,’ said Yggur, now screwing up his face as if he’d swallowed a cup of fishhooks.
‘What’s the matter?’ said Flydd.
‘When one must use a power held in another’s thrall, after-sickness is swift, and cruel.’ The spears did not look as though they’d changed, apart from a slight creaking of their crystalline structures, but Yggur swayed on his feet.
Flydd steadied him. ‘And will get crueller, as I know all too well.’ He raised his voice. ‘Take a spear each and prepare to defend yourselves.’
The prisoners came forwards, picking up their weapons gingerly, as if they had never handled one before and did not want to do so now. It was not a good sign; it meant they still saw themselves as helpless slaves rather than as prisoners determined to escape. There was going to be blood on the floor before they won free – assuming they did.
Flangers hefted his spear with a wince that he tried to disguise.
‘For those of us who know how to use weapons,’ said Yggur, ‘I’ll make something a little more ambitious.’ Holding three spears together, he formed them into a long sword. ‘Use it carefully, Sergeant Flangers. This isn’t as brittle as regular ice, but it’ll shatter if you strike the wrong way.’
Flangers made a space for himself and swished it through the air. ‘It’s a fine weapon. Perfectly balanced, though a trifle light. It won’t
cut far into an enemy.’
‘Ice is light,’ said Yggur. ‘I can’t do anything about that. But it’ll cut deep enough, if you swing true.’
By the time he’d made blades for himself, Colm and Flydd, Yggur was staggering from aftersickness and holding his belly with his free hand.
‘Stand back,’ said Flydd as the Whelm began to smash at the ice webbing over the hole. ‘I’ll take charge of our defences. Flangers, you’re my first lieutenant. Defend our left flank.’
The Whelm, a host of gaunt, staring shadows, were prising at the hole, bent on making them suffer for daring to defy their master.
‘We can’t defend this place,’ Flydd said to Colm, who was standing by Yggur, sword in hand. ‘We’ve got to get out before they surround us and break in from all sides.’
‘There’s a stair in the far corner,’ said Yggur, nodding in that direction. ‘We should make for it, and hope we can force our way out through the sealed door at the top.’
‘Where does it lead?’ said Colm.
‘To the top of the inner tower. It contains the cells, the hall of the registers, the work rooms and the coffins. It’s ten floors high, and lies entirely within the Tower of a Thousand Steps, though it’s completely separate from it.’
‘Why is that?’ said Flydd.
‘I don’t know,’ said Yggur. ‘The outer tower is five times as high, but unused save for the Numinator’s eyrie. Perhaps she did not want it tainted by what was done below.’
‘We won’t get out of here by going up,’ said Colm. ‘We should go down.’
‘There’s no choice. They’ve got this level surrounded.’
Colm lowered his voice. ‘We’ll never get a hundred and fifty terrified people up the stairs. And if we do, we’ll still be trapped, only at the top.’
‘Attack!’ shouted the leader of the Whelm. They burst Flydd’s ice defences and surged through the rectangular hole, far faster than he had expected. Within seconds a dozen were in the room, swinging long black, jag-edged blades.
‘Stand!’ shouted Flangers, defending with his ice-blade, though his illness made him slow. Too slow?
Perhaps it’s for the best, Flydd thought. Flangers had atoned over and over for breaking his soldier’s oath, yet it had not been enough for his unyielding personal code of honour. He was the best of men but the forced betrayal had eaten him away inside, just as the chthonic fire was consuming the tower’s ice from within, until all that remained was the husk.