by Ian Irvine
“What are you talking about?”
“You don’t look anything like a boy.”
She shook her head. Clearly she hadn’t got the message.
“You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen,” said Rix. He opened his arms.
Glynnie threw herself into them so hard that she knocked him off his feet.
CHAPTER 56
Midnight, and Rix was still up, checking the ledgers. The lists of livestock, food, grain and hay, supplies and weapons were endless, but the stocks were short. When his army arrived, Rix did not see how he was going to feed it or its mounts.
The door opened behind him. “Is that you, Glynnie?”
“No, it’s me,” said Tali.
He sprang up, scattering the papers and ledgers, and embraced her, and even through her heavy coat he could feel how thin she was. She took off her coat, and the blue, knitted hat enveloping her small head, and dropped them on a chair. Her golden stubble was longer than Glynnie’s hair but it did not suit Tali. It made her face seem gaunt.
“You’ve lost weight,” said Rix.
“I was fed better as a slave than as a prisoner.”
“Oh, I’m glad you’re here. It feels as though the world is swinging back on its axis at last.”
“If we get the circlet it might,” said Tali.
“Any luck with the search?”
She shook her head, settled in a chair by the fire and, to his surprise, for she seldom drank, accepted a goblet of wine.
“I’ve scoured the whole of Garramide,” she said, “and the land for a mile around, using all the old maps and plans—and my gift, too, when I had the strength for it. If Grandys did hide his treasure hoard here, it’s surpassingly well hidden.”
“I suppose it’s under a charm of concealment.”
“It’s a mighty spell that still works after two thousand years.”
“Maloch was hidden here most of that time. Maybe it’s protecting the hoard.”
“Maybe,” she said wearily. “I don’t know what more I can do.”
“Then we’ll have to try the next plan.”
“Which is?”
“Watch what Grandys does when he gets here, and if it looks like he’s going after the circlet, try to get it first.”
“How close is he?”
“I’ll know when my army arrives, which should be tomorrow.”
Tali leaned back in the chair and closed her eyes. They were sunken, ringed by dark circles, and he could see the tiny blue veins in her eyelids.
“You look worn to the quick,” said Rix.
“My gift is going to kill me one day, but I keep ending up in situations where I have to use it, or fail. I can’t go on, Rix.” She paused, then added, “I suppose Glynnie filled you in on everything?”
“Everything she knew. Does your gift still hurt?”
Tali twisted the goblet in her fingers. “It hurts more each time I use it. My head aches day and night and it’s wearing me away, as I’m wearing the layers of the pearl away. I was strong when you met me—whenever that was—but I feel weaker every day.”
“We met six months ago.”
“Is that all?” said Tali. “It feels like ten years.”
“I think the end is close now.”
“I’m afraid it is, but not a good end. Lyf’s tightening his grip on Hightspall, all save the north, and Grandys holds the north. What do we have?”
“Only Garramide,” said Rix.
“When he attacks we’ll be lucky to hold out a week. The end’s certain now—either Lyf wins, or Grandys does. We can’t.”
“If we find the circlet—”
“What can we do with it?” said Tali. “Save try to destroy it.”
“We could raise king-magery for ourselves—”
“That can’t be done without the master pearl, but it’s so fragile now it’s liable to break the moment someone tries to take it. And even if it didn’t, and even if we had the circlet and could raise king-magery, who would use it?”
“Surely—?”
“Only a truly great magian can command king-magery. Do you know any great magians?”
“Not any more,” Rix said soberly. “The Cythonians have executed every magian they’ve been able to catch.” He paused, staring at the fire. “I rather imagined—”
“That I would use it?”
“Bringing Lyf to justice has been your quest as long as I’ve known you.”
Tali sighed and closed her eyes again. “But surely you’ve realised it by now.”
“Realised what?”
“If anyone gets the master pearl, I’ll be dead.”
“Oh!” Rix stared into the fire for a good while. “What about Grandys?”
“I don’t know what he’s up to.”
“There are some curious rumours going round.”
“Like what?”
“That Lyf and Grandys fought each other at Reffering, and again in his temple recently, and both times Lyf blocked Grandys from using Maloch. Apparently Lyf said it was going to desert Grandys for its true master—and he was really shaken.”
Tali sat up, rubbing her stubble. “When I was held at Bastion Barr, Lirriam kept making snide remarks about the sword’s true master, trying to provoke him. I wondered if the true master could be you.”
“I doubt it,” said Rix. “Grandys took Maloch far too easily at the peace conference.”
“They’re coming!” yelled Thom, the little wood boy. He was perched on the wall of the main guard post, looking out. “Lord Deadhand, we’re saved!”
Rix went across to the wall, plucked the lad from his precarious perch and swung him onto his shoulders. He watched his army move up onto the plateau, trying to estimate their numbers. Less than a thousand—half as many as he had left with Jackery.
“Want to ride out to meet them, Thom?” Rix had befriended the boy when he first became master of Garramide, and whenever Thom had no work to do he was at Rix’s side.
“Can I really?” cried Thom. “Thank you, Mister Deadhand!”
Rix smiled to himself. They went to the stables, he mounted his warhorse and lifted Thom up in front.
“Wow!” said Thom. “This is—wow!”
“Haven’t you been on a horse before.”
“I’m just a wood boy.”
“Not just a wood boy—it’s an important job.”
As they cantered down the road, the knot in Rix’s belly tightened. How bad would it be?
Thom gazed about himself excitedly. “It’s huge!” he said as they approached.
“The army?”
“Yes.”
To Rix it looked small and battered, and many of the men looked wounded and worn. He galloped the last hundred yards, searching the ranks for familiar faces, though he only saw one—the man he had rescued from the crevasse, Sergeant Tonklin. Rix swung down, leaving Thom in the saddle.
“Well met, Tonklin.” Rix shook his hand. “Looks like you’ve had a hard time of it?”
“Aye, but Grandys had a worse one. We held him back two full days, and he lost fifteen hundred men—half his army. He’s a day or two behind.”
“I’d say you’ve lost more than half—”
“No, it’s not that bad. We had an outbreak of dysentery early on and Jackery sent five hundred men off on that track that wends due south after the second pass. They were too sick to fight, but they should be over it by now. Our casualties were relatively light… until the third pass.”
“What happened there? Where’s Jackery? I don’t see any of my officers.” Rix was getting a very bad feeling.
After a pause, Tonklin said, “Grandys was more frustrated after each pass. And angry; by the third pass he was a berserker. He used some almighty magery there to set off an avalanche and sweep us away… but it didn’t go as he expected. I’m sorry, Deadhand. It took Jackery… and your other officers, and Sergeant Waysman, plus a couple of hundred of the troops. And twice as many of Grandys’ men—it just swept e
veryone away, broke them and buried most of them.” Tonklin shook his head. “Grandys was coming and we couldn’t do anything for them, so we came on.”
It was the bitterest of blows, especially the loss of Jackery. In the few weeks since they had met, Rix had grown closer to him than to any other man, save Tobry. It wasn’t right, and it wasn’t fair, but there was nothing to be done except carry on.
“I’m sure you did your best,” he said. “Thank you, Tonklin. We’ll talk further tonight.”
“There is one thing though,” said Tonklin. “We ran into an old ally of yours on the way.”
He turned, raising his arm, and shortly the front line separated to admit a tall, striking, olive-skinned woman.
“Radl!” said Rix. “This is a surprise; a very welcome one.”
“We ran from the battle at Reffering,” said Radl, who was at the head of some fifty Pale. “It’s troubled us ever since and we had to make amends. We’ve come back to help you, any way we can.”
Rix, Radl and Glynnie were in his chambers that evening, talking strategy, when Tali entered. She froze, staring at Radl, then her face hardened. Rix recalled Tali saying that they had been enemies since childhood.
“What are you doing here?” Tali said coldly.
“We came to help,” said Radl.
“I heard you ran like a coward from the battle at Reffering. I don’t see that your help is worth much.”
“Tali!” Rix said sharply. “What’s the matter with you tonight?”
“We ran, and that was bad,” said Radl mildly. “Now we’ve come back to remedy our mistake.”
“It’s a bit late for that,” said Tali.
Clearly, Tali was in a very bad mood. Rix supposed her headaches were worse than usual.
“I don’t know that you qualify as a reliable friend either,” said Radl.
“What do you mean by that?” Tali cried.
“I mean the trail of bodies you’ve left behind. Like your friend Mia, who lost her head because she tried to save you from your reckless stupidity. And Lifka—”
“I didn’t hurt Lifka—well, not badly…”
“You forced a Purple Pixie toadstool into her mouth to make her too sick to go to work, then you stole her clothes and her identity so you could escape.”
“Yes, but—”
“What do you think happened to Lifka after you got away?” said Radl.
“I don’t know,” said Tali. “I didn’t think…”
“The guards blamed her for helping you. They tortured her to death.”
Tali’s knees buckled. She grabbed the edge of the table. “I didn’t know,” she whispered, shivering.
“I wonder how many more people you’ve used and cast aside since you got out,” Radl said relentlessly.
“I—I only did what I had to do—”
“And how many more lives will you ruin in your sad obsession with ‘justice’ at any cost. Your obsession isn’t justice at all; it’s vengeance!”
Tali was shaking her head, over and over. She tried to speak, but nothing came out save a strangled cry—“No, no!” Then she turned and bolted.
CHAPTER 57
“I need to paint,” Rix said to himself two days later, after waking from his latest wyverin nightmare. “I need it more than ever now.”
In the past, drawing and painting had been his only solace in difficult times. In Palace Ricinus, where everything else had been bought for a price he was never allowed to forget, painting had been the one thing that was truly his, the one thing Lady Ricinus could not put a price on.
And for the moment nothing required his immediate attention. He had inspected the fortress, spoken to every one of the three hundred-odd people who dwelt here, personally thanked his little army and Radl’s people, reorganised the guard, and given orders for the defences. And just in time. Grandys was only a day’s march from the base of the plateau.
For the first time in months an idle hour or two stretched before him, and Rix ached for the release his art could give him; to simply lose himself in the joy of creation.
He went to the cupboard where, months ago, he had kept his paints and brushes, the sketching charcoal and palette. Everything was as he had left it. A wide drawer was stacked with drawing paper, and at the back stood a small canvas he had stretched and primed but never used.
He set the canvas up on a chair in the salon, by the window. The primed surface, a light buff colour, called to him. He squatted in front of it, imagining the first painful strokes, the inner struggle it took to create something out of nothing, the carping self-criticism every time he looked at the work in progress, and finally the bliss when hand and eye took over and the outside world vanished.
“Rix?” said Glynnie. “Are you—ah?”
He rose. “You’ve no idea how much I long to paint.”
“Then paint. What’s stopping you?”
“Fear, mostly.”
“Fear?” she echoed.
“Of what I might see.”
Her eyes took on a vacant look. “Your art is a great gift. Everyone says so.”
“Even the chancellor said it,” he added drily. “And not long afterwards he ordered my painting hand struck from my body.”
He studied his dead hand. It matched the left, save that it was a steel grey colour.
“Sometimes my art feels like a curse forcing me to act out a role laid down for me long ago. That’s why I hesitate. There are times when I wonder if I should strike it off permanently, to rid myself of the curse.”
“You did divinatory paintings before your hand was severed and… reattached,” said Glynnie. “Long before, I heard.”
“Perhaps the curse isn’t in my hand,” said Rix. “Perhaps it’s in me.”
“Don’t say that.”
“Look at my last four paintings.”
“I’d rather not.”
“Take the one I did for Father’s Honouring—the portrait of him killing the wyverin. That turned out well, wouldn’t you say?”
“Everyone said it was a brilliant masterpiece,” Glynnie said stoutly.
“Did you like it?”
She shivered. “I don’t know anything about art.”
“I hated it!” said Rix. “The whole time I was working on the portrait I knew there was something wrong with it, and by the end I knew it was the opposite of what I’d tried to paint. The wyverin wasn’t dead, it was just pretending: it was laughing at Father for being such a fool. He thought he was symbolically slaying his enemies, when in reality he was bringing about the downfall of our house… and his own death.”
Glynnie rose abruptly and sat in an armchair by the fire. “How can a painting say all that?”
“If I could see it now I’m afraid it would be saying a lot more than that. Next there was my painting of the murder cellar. Cheerful little piece, wasn’t it?”
She did not answer. He could just see the side of her head; she was staring at the flames.
“Third,” he went on, “the terrible mural I sketched on the wall of the crypt below Palace Ricinus, using bone charcoal and my own blood. It told the future too—it showed Tali and me putting Tobry down.”
“That didn’t happen!”
“Only because the quake did our job for us. Finally, most inglorious of all was my painting of the tormented Grandys on the wall of the observatory, up top. It showed him twisting in agony in the Abysm. Then waking!”
“That wasn’t your fault.”
“The image kept changing, and do you know why?”
She avoided his eye.
“Because Grandys—or Maloch—was working on me through the painting,” said Rix. “Twisting my mind; trying to influence me to go to the Abysm and raise him from petrifaction. And if Tali hadn’t stopped me on the very brink, I would have.”
“There’s no saying it was through the painting,” Glynnie muttered. “I heard that the evil enchantment in Maloch raised Grandys.”
“But Maloch directed me here to Garram
ide. And it certainly worked on my mind when I was painting. So, no matter how desperately I ache to paint, I’m afraid to. Afraid Grandys will use any painting I do to get to me.”
“It’s Grandys who’s afraid now—of you. Besides, you broke his command over you months ago, and Maloch isn’t here to influence you any more. You should paint whatever you want, and damn him.”
Rix went across to the fire and sat in an armchair facing hers. “He’ll soon be here. Do you remember the siege of Garramide three months ago? It almost fell. It was so very close.”
“Of course I remember. But it’ll be different this time. We’ve got far more men to defend the walls, for starters.”
“Grandys has far more men to attack them. Plus powerful magery. And better weather.”
“Not much better.” Glynnie glanced out at the incessant rain. “Besides, Tali could still find the circlet.”
“I pray she does, though it won’t help us win the war.”
“Having it would help keep us from losing the war. Where is Tali, anyway? I haven’t seen her since the argument with Radl.”
“Hiding, I expect. Licking her wounds.”
“I’ve got things to do,” she said, rising. “If you don’t, then paint for your heart’s ease, if nothing else.”
She went out.
Rix did not feel up to painting, but he took out some sheets of paper, laid them on the table and began to sketch left-handed. He did not plan to try his right hand, which had twice come alive when he’d taken a brush in those dead fingers. His right hand had been amputated with Maloch, and he had also been holding Maloch when Glynnie had rejoined his severed hand using the last of Tali’s healing blood. He did not plan to tempt fate.
He had no particular subject in mind, though there was nothing unusual about that—he preferred to let his hand and eye, or perhaps his subconscious mind, create whatever they wished.
He unfocused his eyes, drew for a few minutes with great sweeps of charcoal across the paper, then tossed the charcoal down without looking at what he had drawn and sat by the fire. His whole body was tingling; the blood seemed to be racing through his veins. At last!
He rose, stretched and went to the table. He had drawn a wyverin waking, raising its head on that long, questing neck. No surprise there—over the past weeks he had often dreamed about the wyverin rising.
