by Ian Irvine
“You didn’t get it either, bitch!” he spat.
“I didn’t want it,” said Lirriam calmly, though she was breathing hard. “The enchantment was forever tainted by the way you took Maloch from its true master—just as Hightspall became the Tainted Realm by the base way you betrayed Lyf and stole his people’s land.”
“The Five Heroes betrayed Lyf,” said Grandys. “And you were there—you were one of us.”
“I was under age, and so was Yulia—we were both under your thrall. Nonetheless, it’s to my shame that I didn’t try to stop you; that I was complicit in the sordid business.”
“If you don’t want Maloch, what do you want? What’s the point of all this?”
“To make you break the enchantment—your fatal mistake.”
“But… you broke it… with Incarnate.”
“Incarnate has never had that kind of power. I merely made it look as though those blasts were coming from the stone.”
“I don’t understand,” said Grandys.
“I couldn’t take the enchantment from you,” said Lirriam, sagging. “I don’t have the strength. I tricked you into forcing it beyond its breaking point.”
“But… why?”
“To rob you of the unbeatable protection you’ve enjoyed ever since you killed Urtiga for Maloch.”
“Why would you want to do that?”
“All this time you’ve been obsessed by winning, because you’re desperate to prove to yourself that you’re the man you never were—the greatest warrior of all. Yet all this time you’ve been hiding behind Maloch’s protection spell, like a cowardly boy hiding behind his mother’s skirts. Now it’s gone, you have the chance to truly prove yourself… in a fair fight.”
He picked Maloch up. “You think you can kill me in a fair fight? Then do your worst.”
“I’m not going to rob Rixium of his triumph after he’s come so far.”
Grandys glanced at Rix. “He can barely stand up; he’s as weak as a baby.”
“And you’re as feeble as an old man. Rixium is going to crush you so utterly that people will laugh when your name is mentioned. And when he’s finished, your nemesis is going to eat you. The only memorial you’ll leave behind will be a stinking wyverin turd.”
“I’ll win,” he blustered. “I’m the greatest warrior this land has ever seen.”
“You were,” conceded Lirriam, “when you were young and Maloch protected you from all harm. Let’s see you fight as a man—if you still are a man without the enchantment.”
Grandys hurled himself at Rix in a blinding attack he had not expected from a man so wounded and worn—Maloch was moving so fast that it blurred. Rix reacted instinctively, not planning his moves but allowing hand and arm and eye to take over, as he had done back in the days before he had lost his hand.
Grandys leapt forward, striking a furious triple blow and penetrating Rix’s defences with the last thrust, to pink him in the chest under his right arm. Despite his age, Grandys was brilliant; he had a longer reach and he was fighting with the strength of desperation.
He drove Rix backwards, almost to the edge.
Glynnie shrieked, “Rix!”
Rix sidestepped, leapt out of the way and came at Grandys from the side, trying to force him over. Grandys was too strong; again he drove Rix backwards, this time until he came up against the scarp. Rix ducked a blow that would have taken his head off and Maloch struck the rock, causing a shower of sparks. Grandys went off balance momentarily, jarred to the shoulder by the impact, and Rix struck him on the left collarbone.
Grandys knocked the talon blade aside with a sweep of his arm and advanced again, but now, despite the ferocity of his attack, or perhaps because of it, Rix began to feel that he was gaining. He struck again, and again.
Yes, Grandys was tiring! Rix definitely had his measure, now that he wasn’t fighting the enchantment as well. Grandys was bleeding from a dozen cuts, while Rix had taken but three. He feinted, feinted again, and when Grandys failed to pick the second feint Rix swung a mighty blow against Maloch and snapped it at the hilt.
There came a metallic screech, perhaps the last remnants of the enchantment jetting from the broken end of the blade. The blade shot vertically, turned over, plunged down and embedded itself an inch deep in Grandys’ breastbone, as if it had aimed itself there.
An inch was nothing in Grandys’ massive chest, but he reeled backwards, his arms flailing. The circlet fell off, ringing as it struck the rocky platform. He tried to heave the blade out but his bloody fingers could not maintain a grip; the blade was wedged in and would not come free.
“Not the greatest warrior after all,” said Lirriam.
Grandys stood there, bloody-handed, gasping.
“Say it,” said Lirriam.
“I—can’t,” said Grandys.
Rix could see that defeat was agony to him. It hurt more than any physical wound could have, for it struck at his very identity.
“It doesn’t matter to me whether he says it or not,” said Rix.
“Justice demands you say it,” said Lirriam to Grandys. “Justice to Urtiga.”
He extended his red hands towards her. “Help me.”
She folded her arms across her breast. “Say it!”
“All right!” he screeched. “Rixium beat me in a fair fight. I’m not the best. Lirriam, please, there’s just you and me now. I’ll give you anything.”
“There’s just me,” said Lirriam. “And you have nothing I want.”
She turned, casually surveying the sky, and smiled.
“Now look,” she said, gesturing skywards. “The doom of Herox’s line approaches.”
CHAPTER 84
Glynnie was tugging on the dagger that pinned her shoulder to the tree, trying to extract it without putting any more strain on the roots. Blood flowed freely down her arm and she was unusually pale. In shock, Rix thought, and shock was not conducive to clear thinking.
Suddenly, his injuries and his own blood loss took their toll. He slipped on a puddle of blood, fell down and could not get up.
The wyverin came sweeping in, Lyf riding on its back. Grandys lurched around, the broken blade still embedded in his breastbone. He was covered in blood from many wounds and, momentarily, naked terror showed on his face. Poetic justice, Rix thought. Hundreds—no, thousands—of Grandys’ victims must have felt an equal terror before he brutally ended their lives.
Grandys tried to blast the wyverin down with king-magery, but it failed. He tried again. Nothing! He looked around wildly. Lirriam was wearing the circlet and holding the canister.
He reached out to her, imploringly. “Take out the blade, Lirriam. That’s all I ask.”
“But it’s always protected you,” she said.
“Please. For all the good times we shared together.”
“I remember good times, though none I’ve shared with you recently. Besides, the cursed blade is half the attraction to the wyverin. If I took it out, the beast might go for me.”
The wyverin shot past, lashing its fifty-foot-long tail. The tip cracked like a whip only feet above Grandys’ head, so loudly that it stung Rix’s ears. The shockwave shook the little tree and pulled another of its roots out.
Rix’s heart went into spasm. He forced himself to his feet and lurched towards Glynnie. Lyf leapt off the wyverin and soared through the air, directly for Lirriam and the circlet. She held up a hand and he was frozen in mid-air.
The wyverin snapped at Grandys. He tried to fight it with the hilt and stub of Maloch, a pitiful weapon against such a beast. The wyverin hovered, darted its head, neatly nipped the stub from Grandys’ fingers and swallowed it.
It darted again, caught him by the shins, swung him upside-down and bit his feet off.
“Justice is poetry!” cried Lyf. “And again, wyverin!”
Grandys fell on his head. It caught him by the knees and swung him again. Grandys reached up and caught hold of one of the scales surrounding its nostrils and tried to tear it
away, but he did not have the strength.
It laughed, huff-huff-huff, tossed him high and bit through him at the knees. It swallowed and let Grandys fall. He flailed around on the ground, caught hold of a long knife lying there and, as the wyverin went at him again, struck at its scaly snout. The knife skidded off the inch-thick plates. He struck again and again, but could not penetrate its armour.
He tried to stab it in the eye but could not reach high enough. It tossed him down, tore open his belly and ripped the entrails out, just as it had in the final version of Rix’s portrait.
Grandys screamed and made another desperate attempt to kill it. It bit through him at the hips, and then at the chest, driving the blade that had once been Maloch right through him. Grandys died as he had lived, cursing it all the way, and then it swallowed the rest of him.
He was gone. Gone forever. Rix found it hard to come to terms with.
Of the Five Heroes, only Lirriam survived.
The wyverin’s wings battered the air; it lumbered higher, as though weighed down by Axil Grandys, then settled on the rocky tip of Touchstone, twenty feet above them, eyeing them balefully. Its stomach was churning visibly, and Rix could hear liquids gurgling and swishing.
“It looks as though Grandys is proving difficult to digest,” he muttered.
“But once it does digest him, it’ll be stronger than ever,” said Lirriam.
Radl, who had earlier been knocked unconscious, roused, rolled over and tried to get to her feet.
“It looks stronger already,” Glynnie said weakly. She looked as though she was about to faint.
“They replenish their gift by feeding on magians,” said Lyf, still in mid-air. “And the more powerful the better.”
“You’re not dining on me,” said Lirriam. “Stop!” she said to Rix. He stopped, only six feet from Glynnie, watching Incarnate warily.
“Did Bloodspell work?” said Rix.
“It was never completed—” Lirriam rubbed her face with her hands. “And that’s bad.”
“Are you going to complete it?”
“There may well be a Promised Realm, but it doesn’t lie here. Even so, such a deadly spell can’t be left hanging… Thirty seconds left,” said Lirriam to herself. “Can it be undone in time?”
She raised Incarnate, walked to the half crucible and spoke the Bloodspell anew, though with a different ending. It drained her, though not as badly as it had Grandys. The rock began to shake violently.
A fire bolt streaked down towards the blood-filled half crucible. The blood from ninety-seven people boiled, burned, and the half crucible shattered. Rix went skidding towards the edge, stinging all over from the blast. The wyverin leapt into the air, shaking the top of Touchstone, but settled again.
“No, Rix!” Glynnie said despairingly.
With a convulsive jerk she wrenched the dagger out, pushed against the tree with her feet and threw herself into his path. They collided; his momentum carried them towards the edge; Rix grabbed at several cracks but could not get a grip on the slippery moss. Glynnie, who was still holding the dagger, slammed it down into a crevice.
Rix expected it to snap. He expected them to both go over, but the blade held, and they swung around and came to rest, locked together, only inches from the edge. They rose together, their arms around one another, holding each other up.
Lirriam was studying them with an unfathomable smile. “It would have been just like Grandys,” she said, “at the moment you thought you’d won, to tip you over. He would have taken great pleasure in dashing your hopes.”
She walked to the edge, only feet away. Rix tensed, though if she chose to hurl him and Glynnie off he was too weak to stop her.
She pursed her lips. “I’ve done much evil in my life. I dare say I am evil.”
Rix’s heart was thudding. She could kill them all with the least amount of power, deliver them to any fate she wished.
“But I was coerced into being one of the Five,” said Lirriam, “and now I long to escape my past, not repeat it; to create rather than destroy. I wish you well—whatever you plan to do next.”
Rix and Glynnie edged away from the precipice, and from her. Just in case.
“Why aren’t we all dead?” said Tali. “Why did the Bloodspell fail?”
Errek First-King appeared above Lyf. “Lirriam reversed it. But it would never have worked anyway.”
“Why not?”
“Grandys should never have used Tali’s blood in the Bloodspell. It’s healing blood, and it would have nullified the destructive aspect of the Bloodspell. It would never have set up their Promised Realm.”
“We were looking in the wrong place, anyway,” said Lirriam. “Maybe the wrong world.”
“Then go after it,” said Errek.
She directed a casual blast at him, sending him tumbling through the air, but a spirit could come to no harm from magery, as she must have known.
“Thank you,” said Errek once he’d righted himself.
Lirriam moved along the edge of the precipice. “What for?”
“Your blast helped to rouse the memories lost at the time of my death. And one particular memory…”
“What?”
“Layla Virch was right. ”
Her eyes narrowed but she did not speak.
“Your Heroxian ancestors weren’t nobles exiled to our world,” said Errek. “They were criminals, banished to die in the void for an unforgivable crime.”
“Grandys claimed to be of noble stock, not I,” said Lirriam. “And I fail to see why I should be blamed for the crimes of ancestors twelve thousand years ago. I plan to begin my new life, right now.”
She tossed the circlet up to Lyf. “I wish you every success with your healing.”
Lirriam took Incarnate in both hands, frowning as if trying to solve a tricky problem. She stepped backwards onto a smooth patch of rock slick with blood. Her feet went from under her and, with a little cry, she fell backwards over the edge.
Rix went carefully to the brink and looked over, but she had disappeared into the mist. He turned, shaking his head.
“So ends the last of the Five Heroes. And I can’t say I’m sorry, even if she did redeem herself at the end.”
No one spoke for a minute or two, then there came a long, gassy rumble from above. Everyone looked up.
“It sounds as if the wyverin has nearly digested Grandys,” said Errek. “I’d recommend you deal with it sooner rather than later.”
“You’re the expert on dealing with the beasts,” said Lyf. “What should I do?”
“Put it to sleep before it decides to feast on the only magian left—you.”
“I don’t know the sleep spell.”
“It’s the reverse of the waking spell I taught you before.”
“Exactly the reverse?”
“Well, not exactly.” Errek grinned.
“Just tell me the damned spell,” said Lyf. “Tiny errors in great spells can have bad consequences.”
Errek told him the sequence and Lyf rehearsed the spell under his breath. It took a long time, and Rix was uncomfortably aware that the wyverin was rousing quickly from its digestive torpor. When fully roused it would be faster, and twice as ferocious. Not that it needed to be—it could squash everyone here, simply by settling on the platform.
“Better hurry,” said Errek.
Lyf was going through the spell for the second time.
“It’s moving; it’s lifting. Quick!” yelled Glynnie.
The wyverin was already thirty feet in the air, its vast wings beating slowly, its head turning to look down on them. Its slit-pupilled eyes blinked; it let out an exploratory belch of flame, thirty feet long.
“Now!” said Errek.
Lyf pointed up at the wyverin, drew on the strongest power he could bear, spoke the words of the spell and said, “Sleep!”
The pouches on either side of its neck inflated and it snorted another blast of that noxious red-brown fluid at him. It caught fire in the air
and burned orange as it jetted towards them.
“Block it!” cried Errek, and for the first time there was a note of panic in his voice.
Lyf blocked the jet of burning fluid, only feet away from his face. The orange fire flared out all around him, sending Errek tumbling, and instantly bleaching the moss on every surface to a bony white. Lyf was driven backwards several feet.
“You pronounced the last word wrong,” said Errek. “Say the spell properly.”
Lyf tried again, but halfway through the spell the wyverin whirled in the air and lashed out with its tail, smashing the end of the platform to pieces. He ducked chunks of flying rock and began again.
The wyverin soared high, rolled over and plunged down towards him in a vertical dive, faster and faster. It looked as though it was planning to slam right into the platform and smash him, and everyone else, to paste.
“Slow and careful,” said Errek. “Last chance, Lyf.”
He cast the spell again, carefully enunciating each word, and this time the wyverin’s streaming eyes drifted closed. But it was still diving in the same direction; right at them.
“Look out!” roared Rix, sweeping Glynnie up into his arms.
The wyverin’s wings completed their last flap, moving it off course a little; it screeched past Touchstone only inches away, diving steeply, and disappeared. Shortly there came an impact that shook the peak to its roots.
“What were you planning to do, exactly?” said Glynnie. “Dive over the side with me?”
Rix smiled and put her on her feet. “I’ve no idea.”
“Do you think it’s dead?”
“It will be a mighty beast indeed if it can survive that impact,” said Lyf.
“It is a mighty beast,” said Errek, “and not of this world, though I don’t see how any kind of flesh and blood could withstand such a fall.”
Touchstone gave one final shudder and Holm slid off the spike he had been impaled on. Rix and Glynnie ran across. The fist-sized hole in his back, which had been staunched by the spike, was filling with blood. Tali was on her knees, tearing up clumps of moss and packing it into the wound.
“It’s no use,” Rix said gently.
