by Ian Irvine
Lyf swung the gate away, sending one end to Caulderon and the other to Turgur Thross. Moley Gryle appeared at the Caulderon end and he spoke urgently to her for a minute or two. She turned away and began shouting orders.
The gate disappeared. Lyf stood up wearily and let out a booming call. The gauntling raced in and he leapt on its back.
“Get to shelter while you can,” said Lyf.
Then he and Errek were gone, taking the circlet and the canister of king-magery with them.
CHAPTER 86
Touchstone shook three times, each more strongly than the last.
The clouds closed in.
“Get going,” said Holm.
Rix and Glynnie crouched beside him. Rix held out his hand and Holm took it.
“I’m not leaving you here to die all alone,” said Tali.
“I’ve only a minute or two left,” said Holm. “Clear out or you’ll be spending eternity with me.”
The colour was gone from his face and the tone from his flesh, leaving him grey and haggard.
“Don’t go,” she said. “I need you.”
“You did once, but you don’t any more.” He smiled at her. “It… it’s been good, Tali. You’ve helped to heal me, more than you know.”
“I couldn’t do the most important healing.”
“You did that months ago.” He closed his eyes then said, as if from far away. “Go, go!”
“Holm, wait,” said Tali, tears streaming down her face.
“He’s gone,” said Rix. “He was a good man, one of the best, and he gave everything for us.”
They bent their heads in farewell. Rix picked Tali up and began to carry her down. Glynnie followed, wincing as each step jarred the knife wound in her shoulder.
“I should have given you my healing blood,” said Tali, mortified. “I didn’t even think.”
“It’s all right,” said Glynnie. “Rix bandaged it up.”
The shaking grew wilder. When they were halfway down, the sky cleared like a window rubbed free of dew and Tali saw, way beyond the mountains, a vast area of land between Lake Yizl and the Red Vomit collapse and fall in.
A great chasm formed there. The land cracked on the other side, between the chasm and Lake Caulderon, and lake water flooded down into the chasm. Explosive jets of superheated steam burst up for thousands of feet. The ground and the lakes disappeared behind the clouds of steam. Within seconds she could only see the tops of the three Vomits.
Lightning flashed, then black ash erupted and the northern side of the Red Vomit blew out in a monumental eruption. A black cloud of steam and ash boiled up; boiling lava blasted out in all directions, obscuring all the land.
And racing their way.
Rix began to run. Tali was sure he was going to slip on the mossy steps and carry them both over the side.
“Careful,” cried Glynnie.
“If we’re not in shelter when that cloud gets here,” said Rix, “we’re dead.” He ran faster.
As they reached the bottom of Touchstone, the land seemed to bounce like rubber. Peculiar patterns appeared in the sky, and colours Tali had never seen before. Rix ran towards the standing stones, some of which had toppled, then stopped. Errek was drifting back and forth there, scanning the ground.
“Looking for something?” said Rix.
“Incarnate. It should be close to where Lirriam fell—around here somewhere.”
Rix could see no sign of a body among the rocks, but there wasn’t time to look for one. And no point.
“If you survive what’s coming,” said Errek, “find Incarnate—and destroy it.”
“Why?” said Rix.
“There isn’t time to explain.” He looked between the standing stones. “What’s that still doing here?”
A few hundred yards further on, a shadowy portal was slowly whirling above a steaming crater, sixty feet across and half filled with rubble, evidently where the wyverin had fallen.
“Did Lyf make that for us, do you think?” said Glynnie. “Should we go through?”
Rix hesitated in front of the eerie portal. The hair stood up on his bare forearms.
Errek materialised in front of them. “Keep well away from it. There are worse worlds than this one. Terrible worlds.”
“How do you know?” said Tali faintly. The pain in her head was worse than ever. Unbearable pain.
“My memories are coming back. Fly, fly to Garramide.” He vanished.
“Should we make sure the wyverin’s dead?” said Glynnie.
“How could any creature survive such an impact, against solid rock?” said Rix, his fist tightening on the hilt of the talon blade. “And if by some chance, or magery, it isn’t dead, I’m not going anywhere near it.”
He ran, carrying Tali, to the point where they had tethered the horses. The horses left by Grandys’ party were close by. Glynnie mounted. Rix passed Tali up to her, climbed into his own saddle and they raced back to Garramide with their riderless horses, and the Herovians’, galloping behind.
Tali hardly had the strength to open her eyes. When she did, the boiling black cloud already covered half the sky and the light was a lurid greenish-yellow.
“Is this the end of the world?” she said.
No one replied. When they were halfway across the plateau she saw the scattered remnants of Grandys’ army stampeding down the escarpment. Rix and Glynnie pounded on, in rain which was turning grey, for it was now three parts water and one part ash.
They reached the front gates of Garramide. Nuddell, who had seen them coming, ordered the gates opened. They rode in, Rix saw the horses safely delivered to the stables, then staggered inside, carrying Tali.
He took her down to the lowest level of the castle, where everyone was gathering. All the doors and windows were shuttered, and the emergency supplies of food and water were in place. They closed the stone doors and settled down to await their fate.
CHAPTER 87
“Am I losin” my gift?” said Rannilt as she trudged across the steep slope.
Tobry remained as mute as ever.
She had taken heart after he, shifted to a caitsthe, had rescued her from the Hall of Representation. After returning through the gate Rannilt had healed Glynnie’s injured knee. She had said goodbye, and Rannilt and Tobry had left the plateau.
Rannilt had begun her healing afresh, but she had made no progress. Tobry seemed content to be with her yet he met every attempt at healing with blank indifference. It was crushing her belief in herself.
“Got to sit down for a bit,” said Rannilt. “Sorry! Bad headache.”
She perched on a crumbling, fern-covered log that was rapidly rotting away, and rubbed her head. She still had headaches from the blow she’d taken in the Hall of Representation and was starting to worry that it had robbed her of her gift.
Tobry crouched in front of her, touched her forehead with a dirty finger, then crossed his arms and made a rocking motion. Heal yourself.
“Can’t afford to waste my gift… besides, a healer ain’t supposed to heal herself.”
Tobry let out a piercing screech, sprang up onto a fallen tree and raced along the slippery trunk, thirty feet in the air where it crossed a ravine. He was increasingly reckless these days.
She rose and was walking up towards the ridge crest, hoping to see out of the confining forest, when the ground shuddered so violently that the tall trees swayed and groaned. Further along the ridge a loose boulder went crashing down the steep slope, bouncing higher and higher and smashing trees to bits.
Each quake was worse than the one before, just as they had been before the great trembler that had broken Tobry’s chains a month ago. They were building up to something bad. Did it mean that Grandys had beaten Lyf? There was no way of finding out. They had been lost for days, Rannilt had no idea how to get to Garramide from here, and if Tobry knew he wasn’t saying.
The trees here were two hundred feet tall, their interlocking crowns blocking out the sky. Nonetheless, she could t
ell that it was clouding over; an overwhelming blackness was creeping out of the west, obliterating the sun and turning the light a peculiar olive green.
Then it began—a distant roar like storm waves crashing against a cliff face, save that it grew ever louder and more high-pitched until it became a wind-shriek so unnerving that she had to block her ears.
She reached the top of the ridge. The trees were further apart here; she could see due west along the crest to a monstrous, billowing blackness shot with coils of red fire and illuminated by gigantic lightning flashes. It seemed to be racing directly at her. The ground was shaking wildly now, the trees creaking as they swayed back and forth and smashed their crowns together. A foot-thick branch crashed to the ground not ten feet away; Rannilt let out a screech and looked up. The air was full of leaves, twigs and falling branches.
“Tobry?” she yelled. Her voice was drowned out by the roaring wind and the groan of tormented trees.
There was no sign of him, and even if he had been within sight he would not have heard her. The storm front was only minutes from here and she had to find shelter before it hit. This exposed ridge was the worse place she could be.
She went skidding down the steep southern slope. The soft ground was thick with fallen leaves; her boots cut through to the damp soil and left twin brown streaks behind her. Soon her knees were trembling but she had to keep going; she was only down fifty yards. If she made it all the way to the bottom she might find shelter between the buttress roots of a forest giant, or in a hole—assuming it wasn’t already occupied by some other cowering creature.
Her head was throbbing worse than ever and her breath came in tearing gasps. She ducked under a fallen tree whose crown was caught in the branches of its neighbour, then stopped and considered the cave-like space between its roots. No—if it slipped any further she would be squashed to jam.
The storm struck like a hurricane, with a shrieking roar and a savage wind that tore the tops off the trees that rose above the ridge crest, reducing them to shattered, quivering stumps. Pieces of smashed wood were falling all around her. She ran back and forth; where could she go?
Twenty yards away through the greenish gloom she spied a small, rocky bluff with a niche at the base. It wasn’t a cave; it was no more than a foot-deep space below the overhang, but it had to be safer than being out in the open. She covered her head with her arms and ran for it.
As she reached the niche, a savage storm cell corkscrewed its way along the ridge, tearing trees out by the roots and letting them fall. A length of tree trunk crashed to the ground a few yards in front of her, shaking the ground and sifting grit down into her hair, before rolling down the slope, smashing the saplings in its path. Rannilt squeezed herself into the niche as tightly as she could. Another tree fell, then half a dozen at once, followed by a hail of shattered branches. Splinters of wood, some longer than she was, flew in all directions. If one hit her she would die, just like that.
“Tobry?” she whimpered. “Where are you?”
The storm grew wilder; trees were torn up by the hundred, snapped to pieces and flung down until the slope below her was a tangle of shattered trunks and branches. Further down, one of the largest trees began to bow under the weight of the wreckage caught in its crown. The stressed trunk groaned, groaned, groaned, then snapped, firing shards of wood in all directions. A branch came whirling through the air at her; she ducked sideways and managed to get her body out of the way but could not draw her right leg up in time. The end of the branch struck her ankle an agonising blow and she felt it break.
And a broken ankle down here was probably a death sentence. She shoved the branch away and took her right boot and sock off. Her skinny ankle was already swelling, and throbbing worse than her head. She locked her fingers around it and drew upon her gift to sense out the break, the way she had sensed the broken bones in Tobry’s arm a few weeks ago.
Healers weren’t supposed to heal themselves but she had no choice. She reached deep for her healing gift to make the broken bone grow together but nothing came, no matter how many times she tried. It surely meant that she had lost her gift. No wonder Tobry wouldn’t let her try to heal him.
Rannilt screwed her eyes shut to hold back the scalding tears. Healing was the best thing in her life, the one thing she had all to herself. It was her hope, her joy and her future. How could it be gone, just like that?
The windstorm passed but the gloom thickened until it was almost as dark as night. Warm grey rain began to fall, so thick with ash that it looked like mud. Reeking of sulphur and hot, broken rock as it did, it reminded her of the Seethings and the smoking Vomits next to them. She guessed that one of the Vomits had blown itself to bits, as the Cythonians had long forecast.
Mud ran down the face of the bluff above her, along the roof of her niche and dripped onto her head. She wiped it off and moved aside but it began to drip there as well; there was no escaping it. She could not heal Tobry and she could not heal herself, and now she was going to die, all alone in a ruined wilderness.
Rannilt closed her eyes, gave herself up to her misery and, finally, slept.
A presence woke her, raising her hackles and sending shivers racing up the back of her neck. She could hear it breathing a foot away. She was afraid to move; afraid to open her eyes.
Rannilt squared her scrawny shoulders and gave herself a stern lecture. She might be small and skinny, but if she was going to die she would face death bravely—not like some scaredy-cat. She opened her eyes and all she could see were golden yellow eyes; caitsthe eyes. Was it Tobry? In the dim light she couldn’t tell. There were bound to be other caitsthes in these mountains… and they liked to play with their food.
She tried to say his name but her mouth was too dry for speech. She licked her lips.
“Tobry?” she said hoarsely.
The eyes blinked and she saw a hint of grey in the corners—it was him. Though that did not mean she was out of danger. The caitsthe generally controlled the man, not the other way round.
Rannilt decided to act as though he were a man, not a shifter. A normal, reliable man. Her friend.
“Thanks for comin’ back,” she said softly. “Stupid branch broke my ankle.”
His eyes flicked down to her ankle, then back up. If the caitsthe was in charge, she had just told it she was helpless.
“Give us a hand,” she said.
His right arm twitched, an instinctive blow stifled at the last minute. Tobry was barely in charge of the caitsthe, and any sudden stress could tip it over into full control, but she had to trust the man inside the beast. She reached up as though nothing was wrong, and after an agonising pause he took her hand in his hot, shifter hand. It was a hand, not a paw, and as she clasped it she felt it changing in her grasp, becoming more hand-like.
More like Tobry.
He lifted her out of her muddy nest, pointed to her right ankle and made a noise in his throat—‘Ur-uh!” Heal it.
“Healer can’t heal herself,” said Rannilt. “I’ll have to make a splint… and you got to help.”
She told him what to do and he fetched several lengths of green wood from a freshly broken sapling. She carved notches to go around either side of her ankle, and smaller notches to tie the splints to her calves and boots, the ends extending an inch below her heels to take her weight. Tobry tied the splints on with strips of canvas cut from the top of her pack. Finally she carved a knobbly length of wood into shape for a walking stick.
“I’m really thirsty,” she said, “but the rain’s full of ash, and I suppose the streams are too. Look for a seep comin’ out of the ground.”
He helped her up. She gingerly lowered her right foot until the splints touched the ground. Pain shrieked through her ankle; she gasped and had to grab his arm.
Tobry howled. He could not bear to see her in pain.
“It’s all right,” she said. “I’m all right—the ties just need adjustin’.”
She sat, her leg extended, retied the canv
as strips and tried again. “Ahh!” she cried.
Tobry let out another howl.
“It’s not that bad,” she lied, readjusting the canvas straps. “Gettin’ used to it.”
She still could not walk without wincing, though the pain was bearable this time. At least, until her splints skidded on a rock, jarring her ankle so painfully that she screamed.
At once, Tobry swept her into his arms and carried her down to the bottom of the hill, ignoring her orders to put her down. Remembering his previous reckless behaviour, she wondered if the need to look after her was the only thing keeping him going.
Every rivulet and puddle was choked with foul grey ash and sludge that tainted the water and made it undrinkable. They came to a rock pool and found dozens of yellow-tailed fish floating on the water, evidently killed by the ash though still good to eat. They feasted on half of them and Rannilt cooked the rest to eat later.
Tobry climbed the next ridge but found no untainted water. He carried her down the far side and up three more ridges, each higher than the one before. He was exhausted but would not put her down.
The eruption storm had smashed the exposed trees along each ridge top for as far as she could see. She had no idea where he was going and was in too much pain to care—right now, one place was as good as another. The day had been cold and was getting colder as the afternoon waned. It was still raining watery mud.
“It’s gettin’ late,” said Rannilt when they were halfway up another ridge, which was much higher than the previous ones. Dirty snow covered the ground here. “We’ve got to find shelter for the night. Put me down; I’m all right now.”
He kept climbing through the mucky mixture of snow and ash, as if she had not spoken. They reached the crest and the land opened out before them to reveal a series of towering, snow-clad peaks. The snowfields were partly covered in grey ash, with white streaks here and there marking places where the saturated ash had slid away.
