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

by Ian Irvine

  ‘How the hell would you know? You’ve never been renewed.’

  ‘I knew you well, once, and over the uncounted centuries since my birth I’ve known a number of mancers who survived renewal. You’re not the same man you were when we last met.’

  Flydd turned away, desperately trying not to think about what Yggur was saying. He didn’t want to consider the ugly possibility; couldn’t bear to face it.

  Yggur caught him by the arm. ‘Ask yourself this, Flydd. Where did your ability to make portals come from, and how did it come so easily to you in a world stripped of most of its Arts?’

  ‘She taught me how to make the portal,’ Flydd gritted.

  ‘You know as well as I do that one mancer can’t just tell another how to work a spell. You have to know it from the inside out.’

  ‘All right! She got in my mind at a moment of weakness; she must have put everything there that I needed.’

  ‘It still came too easily, Flydd, and you know it. If I’d made a portal to the Nightland I’d have been crippled by aftersickness for days, yet by all accounts you hardly suffered at all. You made another portal only a couple of days later –’

  ‘A month had gone by when we returned to Santhenar,’ Flydd snapped.

  ‘The only passing time that counts is the time of the place where you spend it – the Nightland. Two days between portals, and no aftersickness – it should not have been possible. And then you made a third portal from Dunnet. You ought to be dead, yet you look better than I do. Why Flydd?’

  ‘Not now, damn you!’ Flydd could feel the pressure boiling up in him. He wanted to strike out at Yggur. He didn’t want to consider that the woman in red had changed him, might even have left part of herself inside him, to control him at some future time. Instead, he directed his fury, and his deep-seated fear of what she had done to him, into the chthonic fire webbing its way across the wall of ice, to blast a way through it.

  A boom shook the steps. Rotten, fire-eaten ice crumbled out of the lower walls in several places and more Whelm scrambled in. Half the prisoners fell down on the stairs in a wave that proceeded from top to bottom.

  When the steam and flying ice had cleared, Flydd saw a neat tube blasted through the ice wall in front of him, expanding outwards on the far side.

  ‘We’re through!’ he roared. ‘Come on.’

  He crawled in. Three Whelm guards lay on the far side, crushed under the ice. One was still kicking.

  ‘And this,’ said Yggur, ‘if you need further evidence.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘The old Flydd could not have done what you just did, using nothing more than cold fire. The woman in red has changed you, Flydd, and good is not going to come of it.’

  Flydd didn’t answer; it was too disturbing. He saw a square staircase to the left, various rooms and corridors ahead and to the right. ‘Chissmoul, do we go up?’

  She nodded. ‘We must. They’ll have taken the lower stair by now.’

  ‘Where does this one lead?’

  ‘All the way to the top of the inner tower.’

  ‘Is there any way out from there?’

  ‘Yes, but we’d have to fight hundreds of Whelm to get to it.’

  ‘Can we defend the top?’

  She hesitated before answering. ‘I expect so … for a while.’

  ‘Then that’s what we’ll have to do. Come on.’

  He ran for the steps and began to scramble up them. They were very steep, and also speckled with chthonic fire. ‘Is the whole damned place fire-eaten?’ he cried as his boot plunged through the tenth step into icy water. Jagged ice tore at his calf as he pulled free.

  ‘Not yet, but the fire seems to be feeding on ice,’ said Yggur. ‘And unless we can put it out, it’s not going to stop until it’s consumed the entire tower.’

  Flydd felt a chill of fear. ‘And what then?’

  ‘The moat water will stop it spreading any further, fortunately. The Numinator won’t be pleased, though.’

  ‘That’s the least of my worries right now.’

  Flydd stopped on the first landing, for Yggur was already lagging behind, and Flangers was labouring. Colm and Chissmoul continued up out of sight. Behind Flangers, the leading prisoners were pushing up, stumbling and fearful. They were torn between an uncanny death at the mancers’ hands or a brutal one from the Whelms’ jag-blades, and little to choose either way.

  The floor rocked sideways, sliding Flydd and Yggur across the landing and throwing most of the prisoners off their feet.

  ‘What was that?’ asked Flangers. He was as brave as any man in the face of physical danger, but was not equipped to deal with the uncanny.

  ‘Felt like a foundation stone crumbling,’ said Yggur.

  ‘Is the inner tower going to fall?’

  ‘Not for a while,’ said Yggur. ‘Her bracelets are taking every speck of power I have, to maintain her realm, and this ice is stronger than brick or stone. Small breaches will heal themselves, for any liquid water that forms will put that patch of fire out and then freeze, welding the ice together again. Where it is rottenest, that part of the wall will collapse, but the rest of the tower should stay together – for a time.’

  ‘Just long enough for us to get to the roof,’ Colm said gloomily. ‘And then the inner tower will fall down.’

  When they reached the top, Flydd echoed his despair. The roof of the inner tower was flat and some fifty paces across, surrounded by a chest-high wall of ice as clear as window glass. Three suspended aerial walkways, equally spaced around the perimeter wall, ran across to a narrow platform encircling the inside wall of the Tower of a Thousand Steps, which curved around and soared above them like the inside of a gigantic cone. On the far side of their roof, another stair ran down inside the inner tower.

  ‘We can’t defend the roof either,’ said Colm. ‘Not with five ways for them to attack us.’

  ‘Flangers?’ said Flydd. ‘What do we do?’

  ‘Block the two stair wells,’ said Flangers. ‘Flydd, you’ll have to do that. You too, Yggur. You’ve got to find the power somewhere, surr,’ Flangers added hastily, for mancers were notoriously short-tempered and quick to take offence. ‘I’ll see if we can deal with the walkways.’

  Flydd and Yggur headed for the second staircase, since the one they’d climbed was choked with scrambling, desperate prisoners. ‘You do it,’ said Yggur. ‘I’ve worked out how to hold back a little power for myself, but I’m saving it for an emergency.’

  Flydd raised an eyebrow. ‘And this isn’t?’

  ‘This is just a skirmish. The real battle is yet to come.’

  Flydd drew power from a patch of white fire and concentrated on the roof of the stairwell, several spans down. It was much harder to break the ice this time, for it was more solid here and he felt hollowed out from overusing his Art, but after much straining the blocks above the bend of the stair separated and fell in.

  ‘I don’t think it’s blocked completely –’ Flydd slumped to his knees, his head whirling and his stomach churning with aftersickness. She was back in his mind’s eye and she wanted something.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ said Yggur, splitting a block over and over, making more spears.

  ‘I saw the woman in red again.’

  ‘What was she doing?’ Yggur rapped.

  ‘Trying to get through to me,’ Flydd said faintly, ‘but she’s faded away.’

  ‘Good riddance!’ Yggur inspected the ice rubble below. ‘One or two Whelm might still scramble through there, but they won’t find it easy to fight on that shifting slope.’

  ‘Nor will our untrained prisoners with their brittle spears.’

  Yggur took an armload of ice spears up, then went down to the fallen blocks to make more. Flydd headed across to Flangers, Chissmoul and Colm, who were at the end of one of the aerial walkways. These consisted of a series of ice planks frozen onto cables of clear, woven ice. There was no sign of the enemy.

  ‘This ice must b
e spell-toughened,’ said Flangers, hacking at a cable. ‘Not even a Whelm jag-blade will make an impression on it.’

  ‘It is,’ said Yggur, laying down another armload of spears, ‘and the tower draws upon my power from time to time, to bolster the cables anew.’

  ‘What if you were to hold it back?’ said Chissmoul who, having been a thapter pilot, understood the ways that power could be drawn, and blocked.

  ‘I’m not sure that I can; the bracelets are still in charge.’

  ‘Here come the Whelm!’ someone yelled.

  Flydd peered over the edge. Far across, on the cone-shaped inside wall of the Tower of a Thousand Steps, lines of Whelm were clambering up a set of rungs to the platform that encircled the inside of the Tower of a Thousand Steps. Once the Whelm reached the platform they could run around it to the walkways, and attack across all three at once.

  Without warning the roof of the inner tower swayed left and right, then jerked downwards half a span, sending slow waves across the suspended walkways and pulling their curves tighter.

  ‘Another course of the tower has crumbled,’ said Yggur.

  ‘It had better not fall any further,’ said Flydd.

  Yggur, now shaking with aftersickness, added another armload to his pile of ice spears. ‘Arm yourselves,’ he said hoarsely to the wide-eyed prisoners, and they obeyed at once.

  Yells and screams broke out behind them. The last of the prisoners were coming up, closely followed by a pack of Whelm. A band of prisoners tried to fend them off with ice spears, but the Whelm smashed the spears with sideways sweeps of their jag-blades.

  Flangers, leading a squad of spearmen, drove them down. Flydd ran to their aid, knocking the useless defenders out of the way with his shoulder and leaping down onto the top step. He’d worked out how to use the jag-sword now. The elegant swordsmanship he’d learned from a master decades ago was useless here; neither could he cut and thrust as he would normally do in battle, for the jags caught on clothing and flesh, and it was difficult to pull free.

  The best way to use a jag-sword was as an edged bludgeon. When swung hard enough it would shear through flesh and bone, and one blow was normally enough to disable an opponent, or kill him.

  A pair of Whelm lunged up the steps, and Flydd felt a spasm of fear. Though he had the advantage of height and speed, it was difficult to get a good swing going in the narrow stairwell. He hacked straight down at the Whelm on the left, who ducked but left his sword upraised. Flydd’s blade struck it with a clang and another flurry of sparks, and the jags caught. The Whelm held Flydd’s sword; he couldn’t free it in time, and the second Whelm leapt up two steps, raising his weapon for the blow that would cleave Flydd in two from skull to navel.

  It was a clever strategy, clearly much practised, and he had no choice but to abandon his sword. He threw himself backwards but his heel caught on the edge of the top step and he landed on his back on the roof, winded.

  The leading Whelm leapt up beside him and raised the jag-blade high to skewer Flydd to the floor. He couldn’t get out of the way; couldn’t move.

  ‘Stay down!’ Yggur roared, and pointed his left hand at the tightly stretched ice cables at the far end of the nearest walk-way.

  The Whelm stopped, staring, jag-sword upraised. Flydd heard a shrill hiss as the woven ice fibres unravelled at high speed, then the cables snapped and hurtled towards the inner tower, their wiry ends lashing about furiously. The ice planks of the walkway were sent flying in all directions, embedding themselves deeply in every surface and smashing down two prisoners who had been slow to react.

  Yggur dropped to the floor; an iron-hard cable end sang over his head, and Flydd’s, slammed into the Whelm’s right cheek, tearing his face off, then continued on its unstoppable way.

  The Whelm fell backwards down the steps but his jag-blade hit the roof, point first, between Flydd’s thighs, then toppled and thumped him in the groin, chest and mouth so hard that tears sprang to his eyes.

  The other Whelm was on his feet. Flydd spat out blood, sat up and hefted the jag-sword. Swinging it sideways so hard that he wrenched his back, he sent it spinning at the Whelm, who could not move quickly enough to avoid it. It struck him in the belly and knocked him down half a dozen steps.

  Flydd got up weakly, holding his groin, the pain coming in waves so intense that he wanted to throw up. He could not look at the faceless Whelm, who was crawling blindly up the steps, still trying to do his duty. Thankfully, Flangers put the fellow out of his misery.

  ‘You’ll have to block the stairs, Flydd,’ said Yggur in a faded voice. ‘I can do no more.’ He was on his hands and knees with his forehead touching the floor.

  ‘I don’t have much left either.’ Flydd studied the layout of the stairs, identifying its weak points as a matter of habit. ‘I’ll have to go down. I can’t do it from here.’

  ‘They’ll have a clear view of you.’

  Flydd shrugged. ‘See if you can do something about the other two walkways.’

  With the destruction of the first walkway, the inner tower had taken on a list, and walking across the sloping, slippery ice was difficult and dangerous. Flydd slid down the sloping stairs, trying to make sense of what he’d heard earlier. Had the Numinator opened a portal to the Nightland? And who had Maelys met there? The questions were unanswerable, but they raised a more urgent one. What would the Numinator do when she returned and saw the destruction? Would she call her Whelm off? The main tower looked solid but the inner one was badly damaged and, without being strengthened with the Art, must fail. Its collapse would bury the hall of the bloodline registers and all those unpleasantly suggestive bodies, skeletons and malformed creatures in jars, ruining her lifetime’s work.

  He hobbled down the steps until he was directly below the weakest point he’d identified in the stair roof. The Whelm who had fallen lay dead with a broken neck, and others were scattered below him, stuck with ice spears. Flydd clutched at his groin, trying to ease the pain, then reached within himself to draw power one more time. It was harder than ever now; he couldn’t concentrate, and he could hear the leathery feet of more Whelm padding up the stairs.

  Now! He drew power hard, directing it into the ice above him which, being almost untouched by chthonic fire, was as hard as adamant. His power made no impression on it. He tried again, but again saw the woman in red, dimly as though through a transparent barrier. Her arms were outstretched pleadingly, but what did she want? For him to let her through?

  As if he was going to add to their troubles by calling her. Every muscle ached from overuse of power, and every bone. He had taken far more from himself than any mancer should have, and he was going to pay for it.

  He tried to dismiss her from his mind, but the look in her eyes kept breaking his concentration, and then he realised that her face was vaguely familiar, though from a long time ago.

  He’d once had a brilliant memory for faces, though that had gone with renewal. He could not think why he knew her of old. Too late; the Whelm had rounded the curve of the stair directly below and seen him.

  From the ranks below the leaders a stream of spears arched up at him, shining in the dim light. He thrust his arm up, directed all the power he had left at the weak point in the stair roof, then scrambled backwards as the ice fell in gigantic blocks, smashing the treads to rubble.

  Most of the spears were brought down by the falling ice, but one shot over his shoulder and slammed into the steps above him. He scrabbled up on hands and knees, desperate to get out of the way. He didn’t think he’d completely blocked these stairs, but it would buy them time.

  Yggur had brought down the second walkway. The third was only connected to the inner tower by one cable, but seven Whelm were pulling themselves across it, clinging upside down by their hands and feet. Terror was etched deep into their faces but they were determined to do their duty.

  Yggur lay flat on his back, barely able to move. He’d taken more from himself than he could spare. Colm and Chissmoul were ha
cking furiously at the remaining cable with jag-swords, one on either side, but their blows were having no effect on it.

  Two more Whelm clambered onto the cable, hanging upside down like gangly sloths, .

  ‘Surr!’ cried Flangers, who was staring down the first staircase. ‘They’ve found a way up!

  ‘And more will follow,’ said Flydd. Which should he attend to?

  He left them to Flangers and Chissmoul, staggered across to the cable end and touched the stopper of his fire flask to it.

  Crack! The cable snapped with such force that the Whelm clinging to it were catapulted in all directions. Flydd didn’t see what became of them, though not even Whelm could survive such a fall.

  The tower tilted left, rocked to the right and plunged down at least five spans before it steadied, tilted at an angle of twenty degrees. The rubble blocking the first stairs disappeared as though it had slid down a plughole, carrying the Whelm with it.

  ‘If the inner tower keeps this up, we’ll be in the basement by breakfast time,’ Colm said wryly.

  Flydd went over to Yggur and helped him up. ‘When I drew power then, I saw the woman in red again; and I know her face from somewhere – from long ago.’

  ‘I didn’t recognise the image I saw earlier.’

  ‘It wasn’t a good likeness. She changes her face from time to time.’

  ‘Well, don’t use chthonic fire again,’ Yggur said limply.

  ‘I’ll try not to.’ Flydd walked away. The immediate threat of the Whelm had eased but they would soon find another way to attack. They were relentless.

  He found the prisoners against the outer wall by the second stair. A few still held ice spears and other weapons, though most were blank-faced and apathetic. They were no use to him, yet he could not abandon them.

  Flangers lay slumped against the wall further around, a red stain flowering below his right shoulder. Chissmoul knelt in front of him, attending to the wound.

  ‘That looks bad,’ Flydd said, crouching over him.

  ‘I’ve taken worse,’ said Flangers. ‘It was a clean spear and it hasn’t hit anything vital. It’s damn painful, though.’