by Ian Irvine
“Rix is following,” said Holm, “with a company of mounted men.”
Tali looked south, but mist shrouded the distance and from where she was sitting she could not make out Turgur Thross, much less Garramide. “How did he get past Grandys’ army?”
“It scattered when the wyverin went hunting Grandys’ battle magians, and his troops are afraid to come back together.”
“So the siege is over.”
“Unless Grandys succeeds with his spells.”
“Where is the wyverin, then?”
Holm shrugged. “I dare say it’ll return once it’s digested its prey—and bolstered its own magery enough to resume the attack.”
“And Lyf?”
“This is the battle he’s been preparing for all his life. He’ll be back.”
“What can he do? He’s lost king-magery, and the pearls are dying.”
“His greatest weapon is still loose, and it’s Grandys’ nemesis. I’ll bet you Lyf turns up the moment the wyverin goes for Grandys. It’ll be his chance to take back king-magery—to literally snatch victory from the jaws of Grandys’ defeat…”
“Now he has the power of king-magery, Grandys might be able to defeat the wyverin as well.”
“He very well might,” Holm said heavily.
Grandys looked up at Holm. “There’s no might about it.”
He completed his stack at the hearth, walked to the edge where he had the best view of the sky, and looked up. His left hand slipped to the talon blade, which he carried in a crude sheath of wyverin skin. Tali assumed he must have made it on the ride to Touchstone.
The rain grew heavier. Syrten was sitting with his back to the cliff, holding Yulia’s shrouded body and crooning to her. Water ran down his back and puddled all around him but he was oblivious. Tali wondered if he had lost his wits with grief.
Rufuss stood at the narrow end of the platform with his black cloak wrapped around his shredded clothes, staring into the rain-pregnant clouds. He was so still that he might have been carved from the same chert as Touchstone itself. Every so often he glanced Tali’s way and she saw that his utter hatred of her had not abated. He had wanted to kill her when he took her prisoner after the great quake, and subsequently she had humiliated him. Now he ached for her life; he burned to take it. She shivered and looked away.
Lirriam sat on a lump of rock, beneath a ledge that sheltered her from the rain, surreptitiously stroking Incarnate with the master pearl Grandys had discarded, gliding the pearl just above the surface of the black stone.
“Wake,” she whispered. “Wake properly.”
“It’s been dead for twelve millennia,” said Grandys. “You’ll never wake it.”
But every so often Tali caught a faint red radiance within Incarnate, the same radiance she had seen there before her escape from Castle Swire. She shuddered; it seemed even darker and more dire than it had then. What would it be like if it did wake properly?
The red radiance caught and grew, and momentarily Incarnate was alight with crimson. Lirriam studied it from all sides, smiling that chilling smile. Then, evidently satisfied that, if not fully woken, at least it was on the way, she touched the stone with a fingertip and the crimson retreated until it was no more than a spark at the centre.
The last patches of ebony lustre faded; the master pearl was now a creamy white.
“Dead!” she said. She tossed it into the nearest puddle and returned to her study of Incarnate.
Tali stared at the tiny pearl, hating it; longing for it. Holm picked it up, rolled it around in the palm of his hand and handed it to her.
“It may not be quite dead to its rightful owner,” he said out of the corner of his mouth.
Tali held it up to the light, marvelling that something so small could have changed the world, and caused her so much grief and pain. She had not seen it before—she had fallen unconscious the moment Holm removed it from her head. The surface was lustrous, the colour rich cream now but with the faintest hint of blue.
Could Holm be right? She sensed something lingering within it; a tiny wisp of magery. But even if she could draw on it, how could it be of any use against the vast power Axil Grandys commanded?
Tali tried to imagine how she might draw on it, but at the thought pain speared through her head, as if someone had shoved a jagged piece of metal down through the hole in her skull. She would have fallen on her face had Holm not caught her.
“You must have a death wish,” said Lirriam, stroking Incarnate with her fingertips.
“We begin!” Grandys announced.
“The hour starts now, Grandys,” said Lirriam, putting Incarnate away and rising. “One hour for all three spells, and not a minute more.”
Syrten set Yulia’s body down in the shelter of the overhang and went to the hearth. Rufuss stood beside him and Lirriam on the other side. Grandys was at the edge of the precipice again, looking down.
“Rixium and his guards have reached the base of Touchstone,” he said conversationally. “But take no comfort from that, Tali; I’ve lured him here. He’ll fight his way up just in time to go blindly to the fate prepared for him.”
“Rix isn’t a fool,” Tali said hotly. “He knows you’ve set a trap.”
“But he’s so hungry to beat me, he believes every little victory comes from his own cleverness.”
“Why take the risk?” she wondered. “With king-magery you could wipe him away from here.”
“The whole point of fighting is to pit yourself against your enemies, face to face and hand to hand,” said Grandys. “To blast your enemy down from a distance, to kill without giving him the chance to kill you, is the action of a cowardly cur, and I’ll have no part of it.”
He straightened the circlet on his head, made sure the canister of king-magery was close by, then cracked the seals on the first of three short tubes he held in his hand. It appeared to have been hollowed out of pale stone. The second tube was either leather or thick parchment, while the third was made from a red metal much darker than copper.
“These spells,” Grandys said in an elevated tone, “were created by Eluciman, the second greatest Heroxian magian of all—”
“Second in infamy only to Herox himself,” murmured Lirriam. “The very same Herox who was the wyverin’s first victim—as you will be its last.”
“By Eluciman,” Grandys repeated irritably, “in impossibly ancient times, in order to cleanse the tainted land so we can remake it into our Promised Realm, as stated in this, our Immortal Text.”
He held the parchment up, its edges fluttering in the wind. A flurry of raindrops darkened it. He held it out of the rain and strode to the open hearth.
“King-magery is a healing force,” said Holm. “Using it for destruct ive purposes must tip the balance beyond the point of return. If you do this, the land can’t ever be healed.”
Grandys knocked him down with a casual backhander. He twisted the cap off the stone tube and shook it in the air. Nothing fell out, though scintillating glyphs appeared in the air below. Tali could not read them.
“Stonespell,” said Grandys.
Drawing on the full force of king-magery, he spoke the incomprehensible glyphs in a deep, booming voice. After several seconds, a creeping yellow stain formed on the edges of the mortar holding the stones on the hearth together. It ate the mortar away, the stack collapsed, and the slender white arch behind the hearth cracked and toppled.
“As on this hearth, so too throughout the land of Hightspall,” said Grandys. “Every mortared stone laid by our enemies will tumble… until all their works have fallen.”
Tali caught a whiff of something unidentifiable but pungent, and felt a series of distant shudders, transmitted through the rock to Touchstone. Had every building in Hightspall come down? Had Garramide? And this was only the first spell.
Grandys’ arm was shaking but he kept it extended, holding the spell for several minutes, before staggering sideways and falling to one knee. His head drooped. He remained tha
t way for another half minute before slowly raising his head.
Lirriam let out a harsh caw of laughter. “Well done, old man!”
In the few minutes Grandys had held Stonespell, it had aged him. Half his remaining opal armour had lost colour and flaked off, revealing saggy, sallow skin beneath. Tali could not believe it was the same man who had stood proudly naked before his troops only yesterday.
“Why has it aged him so?” she asked Holm.
“Mighty spells take a mighty toll. And he powered Stonespell by corrupting king-magery—by using healing magery for a destructive purpose.”
“Are you sure your lifetime is long enough to cast the Three Spells, Grandys?” said Lirriam.
She wore Incarnate openly now. The crimson flame inside it was flaring and fading in a steady rhythm that suggested it matched her own heartbeat. Her eyes reflected the colour, almost as if she had taken its power within her.
“I—can—do—it,” said Grandys, with an all-out effort.
“Then lead on!” she said ringingly.
CHAPTER 80
Tali felt strong enough to stand unaided now, though Grandys was taking no chances. He ordered Syrten to carry her up to the next platform, the second highest on Touchstone.
The mist had thickened and she could no longer see all the way down. Considering the steepness of the wet, mossy steps and her own fear of heights, this was a blessing. By the time they reached the second platform it was raining heavily and a keen easterly wind was driving it into their faces.
Syrten put Tali down under an overhang shaped to keep out the worst of the rain. He turned and plodded down again, for Yulia’s body, Tali presumed. Holm came up, panting, and crouched beside her.
Grandys set down the cabinet and put the Immortal Text and his spell tubes in a dry, half-domed niche behind a rusty cast-iron furnace. It was five feet high, with a side door and a sinuous chimney with a cap at the top to keep out the rain.
From the cabinet he took seventeen written artefacts, one after another. Tali had seen many of them before, when she had been held in Bastion Barr. There were scrolls, books, an etching or engraving, the blueprint of a complicated device that might have been a pump, two musical scores, a map showing the depths of Lake Fumerous, an illuminated manuscript, and other items on paper, parchment and wooden panels.
Grandys barely glanced at each item before casting it into the fire box. He did not name the items, though Tali felt sure they were treasures that could never be replaced.
“You’re too slow, old man,” said Lirriam. “The Three Spells must all be cast within the hour.”
He scowled, took a backwards step when he saw that she was openly fingering Incarnate, and cast in the last items.
From below, Tali could hear the clash of weapons. She exchanged glances with Holm. Rix could not hope to defeat a man who had king-magery at his fingertips. Unless she did something to help him, he would fall into Grandys’ trap.
Her questing gaze fell on Yulia’s long face, forever fixed in despair.
“Why did she kill herself?” Tali said quietly.
“Lirriam and Grandys were talking about it on the ride here,” said Holm. “Yulia used an ebony pearl to read something concealed in the Immortal Text, then took poison and died with the Text beside her.”
“What did it say?”
“I don’t know.”
Yulia had been the noblest and most decent of the Heroes. For her to take her own life, when the Heroes were on the brink of achieving their two-thousand-year-old goal, what she had read must have been shattering.
But was it worth risking the tiny hope Tali had left? Yes, she thought. It’s too late to hold back now. If Yulia’s secret could possibly help Rix, she had to go after it.
Grandys was occupied at the furnace, Syrten oblivious in his grief. Rufuss stood on the brink again and Lirriam was peering into Incarnate, her face lit eerily by its pulsing light.
Tali touched the master pearl in her pocket and tried to draw on the tiny wisp of power remaining in it. Pain spiked, again and again—cruel, savage pain. She forced herself to endure it, took a wisp of power from the master pearl and drew the coiled Immortal Text to her, just above the ground so it would not be noticed. The pain grew worse. She clenched her teeth, caught the coil of parchment and unrolled it in her lap, and read.
The Immortal Text was a xenophobic rant about the superiority of Herovians in all things. It exhorted them to cleanse the land of its foul taint, with the Three Spells, so they could recreate it as their Promised Realm.
All this she had long known. She skimmed to the end and turned the parchment over. The other side was blank. She turned it back and forth. There had to be more. She touched the master pearl to the parchment and writing appeared on the back.
I, Neverio Bunce, forged this parchment at Hierarch Virch’s behest, to send you Herovian pigs on a wild-goose chase to the far side of the world. You’re gullible fools all, desperate to believe you’re a chosen race… when in fact you spring from hereditary serfs.
The physical qualities that epitomise your Herovian race, of which you’re so inordinately proud, came from our selective breeding of your serf ancestors—like prize pigs.
Don’t come back, swine!
Tali let out a snort of laughter. Grandys spun around; the Heroes’ eyes were all on her, and the parchment in her hand.
“It’s a forgery,” said Tali. “That’s why Yulia killed herself.”
Syrten howled and drove his armoured fist six inches into the black, obdurate chert. Grandys sprang forward and snatched the Immortal Text from her hand.
“How dare you impugn the sacred text!” He raised his own fist as if to punch her head from her shoulders.
“Stop!” cried Lirriam. Grandys stopped. “Explain yourself, Tali,” Lirriam said coldly.
“The scroll is signed on the back in secret writing,” said Tali, “but it can be read with an ebony pearl. The parchment was forged on behalf of Hierarch Virch. Who was he?”
“She,” said Lirriam. “Layla Virch was our greatest foe, back in Thanneron.”
The three Heroes advanced on Grandys. Lirriam handed him one of the ebony pearls he had previously discarded. They each touched the pearl and Grandys held the back of the parchment up so they could read it.
“Well?” he said when Syrten’s opal encrusted lips had stopped moving. “Are we agreed?”
Lirriam jerked her head at the furnace. Grandys tore the Immortal Text into shreds and cast it in.
“I will not accept that my life’s work was based on a lie,” he said in a low voice that belied his monumental fury. “How our enemies must have sneered as we left Thanneron on the First Fleet—but they were wrong. Their foul lie only reinforces a deeper truth. We are noble!” he thundered. “Far nobler than the highest and greatest nobles of Thanneron.”
“How can you say that when your ancestors were serfs?” said Tali.
Grandys took a deep breath, as if to reveal something that had never been said before. Perhaps he felt a need to convince her of his truth.
“Before we were enslaved, we Herovians—originally Herox ians—came to this world from another place. A place beyond a thousand stars.”
Tali gaped.
“And I’m a direct descendant of the incomparable Herox, the leader of Clan Herox,” said Grandys, “before whom the greatest nobles of Thanneron stand as base-born scum.”
He drew Maloch and brandished it at the sky. “We came from another world, searching, even then, for our Promised Realm. But we did not find it; we ended up in vile Thanneron, naked and defenceless. We were taken into bondage there and ever after persecuted… yet we never forgot where we came from, nor what we were looking for. We will have our Promised Realm.”
“We are chosen,” said Lirriam, standing with him for once. “And this is the proof.” She held up Incarnate. “The stone died when our ancestors went astray on the way to this world. Now I’ve begun to bring Incarnate back to life, we can find our
true path.”
Tali’s revelation had backfired. It had only made them all the more determined.
“The Text may be a fake,” said Lirriam, “but the Three Spells are not. You have the power, Grandys. Use it! Time is running out.”
Grandys turned to the furnace, jerked the cap off the parchment tube and shook it in the air. A different set of glyphs appeared, black outlined in red, like paper charring without ever catching alight.
“Writspell!” he intoned. “To burn every written work of Cythe, Cython and Hightspall to ashes, and erase all evidence of their decadent civilisations.”
As he prepared to read the spell, Rix burst up onto the platform, followed by Glynnie, who was carrying a rolled canvas. Grandys blasted at Rix but missed, perhaps deliberately. Glynnie held onto one end of the canvas and threw the rest forward so it unrolled across the black rock. Every eye turned to the canvas, which had changed again.
Grandys let out a gasp.
No one moved for a few seconds. The fallen warrior was the image of Axil Grandys now, even to the places where his opal armour had broken away, and the wounds the wyverin had inflicted on each shoulder.
The painted Grandys was looking up in terror as the wyverin lunged at his middle and tore out glistening loops of intestine. The real Grandys looked down at his image, his mouth hanging open. Several biscuit-sized chunks of opal flaked off him.
He stooped and, with a furious wrench, tore the canvas across. He stuffed it through the side door of the furnace, kicked it shut and stood there, his chest heaving. Glynnie and Rix were creeping back towards the steps. Grandys blasted at Glynnie; Rix took the blast on the flat of his sword, which glowed yellow, then dragged Glynnie down the steps out of sight.
“You’re dead,” Grandys roared, running after them.
Lirriam caught him by the arm. She must have been far stronger than she looked, for she held him. He whirled, raising his fist.
“You also need Rix for the endgame,” said Lirriam. “Besides, there’s no time!”
“What?” he said, shaking his head dazedly.
