by Ian Irvine
Her pretty attendants came forward with damp cloths, then froze, staring at her. Someone gasped; someone else cried out in shock. The groom turned.
‘Calluly?’ he said, then dropped his ceremonial sword and reeled backwards, his mouth open.
Her attendants were backing away, their faces twisted in horror and disgust. Calluly’s face was swelling, gross purple nodules and fleshy protrusions forming all over it, and on her throat and upper chest and arms. They were even visible under her gown now. Her once pretty mouth gaped, so warped that she could no longer close it, while a massive wen completely covered her left eye.
She cried out and reached out to her groom with disfigured hands, but he could not look at her. Everyone seemed repulsed.
Maigraith moaned and muttered one spell after another, evidently seeking a counterspell that could reverse the damage. None had any effect.
The guests cowered at the edges of the roof garden, as far as they could get from Calluly, as if to avoid the contagion. She stumbled to the wedding table, picked up a silver lover’s cup and examined her face in it.
She screamed, but only once, then regained control and looked contemptuously around at the groom, and her cowering relatives and friends. Maigraith was still frantically speaking counter-spells, but Calluly was unchanged. Could the effects of a scent potion be broken by anything other than a counter-potion?
Calluly straightened her back and squared her shoulders, and walked slowly to the fallen sword. She picked it up and reversed it, and, as Aviel watched in mounting horror, put the tip under her ribs and with a swift jerk, drove it upwards as far as it would go.
She stood there for a good thirty seconds, the blood flooding down her gown, then collapsed. Even then, the groom hung back in fear.
Maigraith gave a great cry, fell forwards and her head thudded into the table. The gate winked out of existence.
Aviel was stricken, unable to move. Why had she interfered? In trying to prevent one death she had precipitated another – and it had been done with her scent potion.
She crept forwards, half-hoping Maigraith was dead, though that did not seem likely. She might regain consciousness any second, and she must never know that Aviel had been here.
A glimmer leaking from Maigraith’s fingers revealed that her long face had gone lumpy on the left-hand side. She must have inhaled some of the spilled scent potion. Was it poetic justice that, in seeking to destroy her young rival’s looks, Maigraith had ruined what remained of her own?
For the rest of the night, Aviel kept reliving the awful moment: the beautiful bride, at the happiest moment of her life, turned into the outward semblance of a monster. And it was partly her doing.
She had to make amends. She could not let Maigraith use and manipulate her, ever again.
Maigraith had to be stopped, even if Aviel had to turn down the dark path to do it.
41
We’ve Got 48 Days To Save Humanity
Flydd was on his back on the deck of the sky galleon with his trews down. Maelys knelt beside him, threading a needle, the size of a small harpoon, threaded with cord the thickness of an anchor rope.
‘If he’d been half a second quicker, we’d both be dead,’ said Flydd. ‘And I didn’t even realise he was there. How did you react so quickly, Karan?’
Karan felt cold, sweaty, dizzy, and her ribs hurt with every movement. ‘I – I sensed his rage. By the time he came to his feet I was going for my knife. I’ve – always had fast reflexes.’
Nish and Flydd exchanged glances. ‘Lucky you were beside Xervish,’ said Nish. ‘If it’d been me, the assassin would have killed us both.’
Only a few minutes had passed between the attack, the escape through a small gate that only carried the assassin a couple of miles, then that second, desperate gate, but blood had already soaked through the folded shirt tied around Flydd’s deeply gashed hip.
Maelys removed the shirt and cleaned the wound, which started to bleed again. ‘This is going to hurt.’
Flydd nodded stiffly and she began to sew the lips of the eight-inch gash together. Karan, who could see his hip bone, looked away.
‘So that was Skald,’ said Nish. ‘A bold, determined man. Though …’
‘What?’ grunted Flydd as the thick black thread was drawn through leathery skin and stringy flesh.
‘He looked oddly withered as he went through his second gate. And he was bleeding from the mouth and the arse. His trews were soaked in fresh blood.’
‘He must have partly drunk his own life to get the power for the gate. Such desperate ingenuity. What’s he going to do next?’
‘With any luck the swine won’t survive it.’
Karan wasn’t so sanguine.
After the surviving fighters had been paid a hefty bonus and returned to where they had been hired, and the bodies buried, Flydd took the controls again. In a grim mood and a lot of pain he headed north-east, passing over the beautiful marble-built town of Ashmode on the shore of the Sea of Perion.
Karan had nearly died there, thirteen years of her life ago, after escaping with Shand from the devastation Yggur and Tensor had separately wrought on Thurkad. Shand had helped her to regain her health and her sanity, and had supported her on their desperate trek across the Dry Sea to Katazza, to free Llian, who had been kidnapped by Tensor. She often wondered what had happened to Shand. He had lived an exceptionally long life, but he must be long dead now.
Flydd did not cross the sea, but passed over the Carendor Desert, which had turned green since the Dry Sea filled, and beyond it brown, sun-baked Kalar, which remained desert. More than a day later he turned right through a gap in the mountains and headed east and down towards the edge of the Sea of Seas, the great ocean that, for all anyone knew, covered the rest of the globe. A huge, molten red sun hovered just above the mountains behind them.
‘Hell of a lot of smoke,’ said Karan, who was standing at the bow, her hair streaming out for a yard behind her in the wind. Taking pleasure in little things, since every big thing in her life was out of control.
Nish came up beside her. ‘That’s Maksmord. Is the city on fire?’
‘Not just the city. Farmland’s burning as far as I can see.’
‘Xervish?’ called Nish.
Flydd locked the controls and came forwards, wincing with every step. ‘Why would they capture a city, then burn it? Doesn’t make sense.’
As the sun went down, he landed the sky galleon on the peak with a view in all directions and set to with his farspeaker. Clech made a campfire and Nish prepared food. Maelys sat by the fire, gazing into the Mirror. What could she be seeing on it, that had kept her entranced for so long? And was it real? The Mirror had never shown truth in the past.
Shortly Flydd said, ‘Lilis reports that the enemy are abandoning all their captured cities. They’ve made a series of enormous gates, at an unfathomable cost in power, and the whole Merdrun nation – including their civilians – are going through to Skyrock. She hasn’t been able to find out why.’
‘But there’s nothing at Skyrock,’ said Karan, ‘and it’s high country, too cold for crops. How can they feed hundreds of thousands, and all their slaves? How can they house so many?’
Flydd shrugged. ‘They’re building furiously. And they’ve occupied several of our old mines and manufactories, nearby.’
‘Why would they go there, anyway?’ said Nish.
‘I told you – the greatest known node of power lies under Skyrock.’ Flydd paced, staring east at the smoke. ‘I can’t bear to think what they’ve done to Maksmord.’
Nish offered him a steaming bowl of chowder that Clech the fisherman had made from smoked eel heads. ‘Take the weight off your feet.’
Flydd took the bowl. ‘Sitting hurts too much.’ He sniffed the contents, grimaced and took a piece of hard brown bread. ‘Don’t feel like eating.’
‘It’s a sad day when you knock back a bowl of eel-head chowder,’ said Clech with a rare smile. ‘Hand it over.’
Flydd passed it to him and gnawed at the bread, but abruptly tossed it into the fire. ‘The first slaves they took to Skyrock were miners and stonemasons. Lilis says they’re cutting the pinnacle down to form a tower and carving out chambers inside it.’
‘What are they building?’ said Karan.
‘I suspect … it’s a gigantic device …’
Shivers passed up and down her back. ‘What for?’
‘I assume it’s a weapon. To subjugate Santhenar. Or … get rid of us.’
‘Why would they want to?’ said Maelys.
‘They’ve lost 40,000 troops, from an army of 190,000, and in a war of attrition they could lose that many again every year. In five years, they’d be wiped out.’
‘So the only solution is to wipe us out first.’
‘Hence this Skyrock device. And one of Lilis’s spies heard it has to be ready by the sixty-fifth day. Counting from the day of the invasion.’
‘And today is …?’ said Maelys, looking up from the Mirror for the first time.
‘Day 17. We’ve got 48 days to save humanity.’
Maksmord was a ruined city.
Built largely of timber, it had burned like tar paper when the Merdrun set their cunning fires on a hot, windy day, then abandoned it. Only the stone-built city centre had survived, scorched and smoke-stained and covered in knee-deep drifts of hot ash.
‘Eighty thousand people lived here,’ said Flydd.
‘And now?’ said Karan.
‘Only one.’
He set the sky galleon down on the sole surviving wharf. All the others had burned, and this one creaked and quivered under the weight. He climbed down and Karan followed, glad to be able to stretch her legs, even in so grim a place.
‘And here he is,’ said Flydd.
A wandering pedlar was approaching, a man once tall and muscular but fallen on hard times. His back was bent under the weight of his load, his clothes were grey with ash and full of burn holes, and he had the drawn look of a man who had not eaten well in weeks.
‘Madder,’ said Flydd, limping to him and extending a hand.
Madder held out his right arm, ruefully. It terminated in a red, infected stump.
‘Come up, we can feed you, at least,’ said Flydd, clasping his shoulder. ‘And I know a healing charm or two.’
Madder took off his packs and went awkwardly up the ladder. Flydd introduced Karan, Nish, Maelys and Clech, offered Madder a seat and gave him a drink and a hearty slice of pickled buffalo organs and onion pie. Madder wolfed it down and wiped gravy off his mouth onto his sleeve. ‘Best meal I’ve had in a month.’
Nish put a larger slice on his plate. Madder prised out a buffalo eyeball the size of a lemon and moved it to one side of his plate.
‘They left us nothing,’ he said, between gulps of pie and slurps of cold tea. ‘Collected all the food and supplies. Drove hundreds of wagon loads through their mighty gates. Enough to do them and their slaves for a month or two, I’d reckon.’
Forty-eight days, to be precise, Karan thought. And what happens then?
‘Then they torched the rest,’ Madder continued. ‘Granaries, warehouses, manufactories, the mansions of the rich and the shanty towns along the river. And all the crops that would burn for miles around.’
‘What about the people?’ said Flydd, offering Madder a mug of red ale.
‘First thing the bastards did was round up everyone with building skills. Masons, metal workers, carpenters, architects and even artists –’
‘Why artists?’
Madder shrugged. ‘And they killed everyone who had been an officer in the Lyrinx War, on the spot.’
‘To deprive us of everyone with experience in war.’
‘The word passed around quick. A lot got away. I don’t know where.’
‘Can you find out? I need an army – though I don’t know how I’m going to feed one.’
‘Do my best,’ said Madder, slicing the buffalo eyeball in half and swallowing one piece with a sigh of appreciation.
The other half seemed to be staring at Karan. She felt a touch of nausea.
‘What about ordinary folk?’ said Flydd.
‘They took the big, strong men and women. Whatever they’re building, they need a lot of slave labourers. Everyone else fled, but they’re leaderless and desperate, and hungry.’
‘And with the crops burned, they’ll stay that way,’ Flydd said grimly.
‘There’s another thing, surr,’ said Madder. ‘Don’t know if it means anything. But they took all the silver they could find. And the silversmiths.’
‘What’s odd about that?’
‘They didn’t bother with the gold. Just the silver.’
‘Maybe it’s precious to them.’
‘I never saw them wearing silver, men or women.’
‘Silver and silversmiths,’ said Flydd. ‘How peculiar.’
He worked a healing charm on Madder’s stump. In the morning the infection was almost gone, and he went on his way. They flew north-east to the next big city, Gosport, then north again to Guffeons and Twissel, spending a day or two in each place while Flydd located and spoke with his spies, and surveyed the scene for himself.
It was the same everywhere. Ruined cities and the crops burned for many miles around. Former military officers, and other people who could pose a danger, killed. The strong and the skilled shackled and sent through a mighty gate, presumably to Skyrock.
And every scrap of silver collected.
‘It’ll be different in Roros,’ Flydd said. ‘It’s the biggest and strongest city on Santhenar, and Yulla has always been well prepared. Even the God Emperor had to make a deal with her.’
‘Wouldn’t get my hopes up,’ muttered Nish. ‘The enemy attacked Roros with sixty thousand troops.’
‘And didn’t make much progress; it was too cunningly defended …’
‘What’s the matter?’ said Karan when Flydd did not go on.
‘I haven’t heard from Yulla in the past week … But it can be hard to contact her.’ He bit his lip. ‘We’ll be there in the morning. Everything will be all right.’
I hope so, Karan thought gloomily. Though I very much doubt it.
Down the back of the cabin, Maelys was gazing into the Mirror of Aachan as if it was the only good thing left in her life – though Karan could not help thinking that the Mirror was an addiction Maelys could not break.
42
Their One True Weakness
Stop it, you wicked little boy! Better you die a coward’s death, like your cursed father, than say such things.
Sulien jerked upright on her hard bunk. A woman was screaming at Skald. No, he was remembering something from long ago. Something shameful.
Help me! He sounded desperate for comfort. Please. I don’t want to be like this.
Sulien must have touched his mind while he was asleep, and if ever she was to discover news of Llian, now was her chance … but Karan had begged her not to use her mind-seeing gift again.
Besides, if Sulien could sense Skald, he might be able to sense her. Had he sent these awful memories to gain her sympathy and lure her in?
She blocked him, put her boots on and went out the back door in her nightgown, intending to walk down to the stream and sit on a rock by the water. She always found the sound of running water soothing.
It was a cool night, quiet and still, with the moon in its first quarter, mostly showing the dark face that was an ill omen.
‘What do you want?’ said Jassika, who was perched on Sulien’s favourite rock.
Sulien jumped. ‘Where have you been all this time?’
‘In a cave. Up a tree. Wherever.’
‘For two and half weeks?’
Jassika shrugged. As Sulien’s eyes adjusted, she saw that Jassika’s clothes were torn and dirty, her hair tangled, and she smelled. But she did not seem so unhappy.
Sulien sat on a smaller rock. ‘What do you live on?’
‘Fish and small animal
s, and wood grubs and roots. Every day I try something different. It’s exciting.’
Never knowing if she was going to get a meal the next day? Or be a meal for some beast hunting in these endless mountains? Sulien squirmed. ‘Don’t you get lonely?’
‘I’ve been lonely all my life. It’s easier being lonely alone than it is in company.’
‘I’ll never understand you.’
Jassika snorted. ‘I watch you working all the hours of the day, and wonder why. The old hag has made a slave out of you. Run away with me. We’ll have fun together.’
‘I’m earning my keep,’ Sulien said primly.
‘Flydd paid for our keep, with Klarm’s money.’ She mostly called her father by his name, rather than Father or Daddy. ‘The ugly old witch has to feed you whether you work or do nothing. What do you do for fun?’
‘I read in bed, until my rush light burns out.’
Jassika got down from her rock and splashed towards Sulien. ‘I sometimes watch you through a crack in the wall. What do you read? Doesn’t look like it’s much fun.’
‘Um, instructional scrolls. The old woman writes them.’
‘What about?’
‘Doesn’t matter.’
‘What about?’ Jassika said loudly.
‘How to ferment cabbage in a pig’s stomach. And How to preserve fish by putrefaction. And, um … How to make toilet wipes from cutty grass.’
‘Ouch! What about the fat old fool?’
‘He paints pictures of grains of sand.’
‘All day and every day?’
‘Yes, but he’s not very good. They just look like crumbs.’
‘Is he insane?’
‘How would I know?’
‘What are you doing out at this time of night, anyway?’
‘I – I sensed Skald again.’ Sulien told her about it.
‘If he’s tormented, it’s because he’s done something really nasty.’
‘It was when he was a little boy, and he’s still in pain. I … I felt for him.’
