The Perilous Tower: The Gates of Good & Evil Book 3

by Ian Irvine

  ‘Up! Work to do.’

  ‘I finished all my work while you were gone,’ said Aviel, rubbing her eyes. For the first time in weeks she’d had enough sleep.

  ‘Except the rejuvenation potion.’

  ‘The first of my scent blendings has to mature for another ten days. And even once it’s done, and the second blending, I can’t do the final blending until the moon is in its first quarter. That’s more than three weeks –’

  ‘I know when it is!’

  Aviel glanced at Maigraith’s face, careful not to arouse suspicion in someone who was already paranoid. She looked haunted, though Aviel did not think it was remorse. Maigraith seemed devoid of a conscience. It must be because she had failed to destroy her rival.

  The gross deformities from the potion were gone but the counterspells had not quite restored her face to normal. The left side was unnaturally smooth and did not move when she spoke. She looked lopsided.

  Good! You didn’t get away with it, you malicious old hag!

  ‘Get up!’ Maigraith repeated.

  ‘Go away and let me get dressed in peace.’

  Maigraith dragged her out of bed and Aviel’s bad ankle turned under her, bringing tears to her eyes. Maigraith watched while she washed her face and hands, took off her nightgown and dressed. She felt hideously uncomfortable, but what could not be changed must be endured. For now.

  ‘How did your scent potion go?’ she said casually, as though it had just occurred to her.

  ‘Imperfectly.’ Maigraith gave her a sharp glance. ‘I need an antidote.’

  ‘I can’t devise one without knowing what the potion does,’ Aviel lied.

  ‘I have the method. All you have to do is make it.’

  ‘If the process was mechanical you could train a parrot to do it,’ Aviel snapped, knowing she was taking a risk but needing, for her own sake, to put on a show of defiance. ‘What’s the scent potion for?’

  ‘How dare you question me?’ Maigraith cried, raising her hand to strike Aviel.

  After a childhood full of blows, Aviel was skilled at evading them and delivering blows of her own to her father and sisters, who had all been bigger and stronger. She ducked and swung her right hand in a ferocious backhander against Maigraith’s left cheek.

  Maigraith fell backwards onto the bed. Aviel wrung her aching hand; Maigraith’s cheek was almost as hard as stone. Was that from the scent potion, or the spell she had used to try and reverse its effects?

  She sat up, and the look on her face was malevolent. Aviel had to take control, or die.

  ‘You will never touch me again,’ she said, raising her throbbing hand. ‘Understood?’

  For a full minute, as they stared into each other’s eyes, she thought that Maigraith was going to blast her dead. Perhaps Maigraith thought it, too, then the tension drained out of her.

  ‘Understood,’ she said with a twisted little smile. ‘Come.’

  As Aviel followed Maigraith to the workshop, she finally understood her. She had been created and brought up by Faelamor, her entire existence moulded to Faelamor’s fell purpose, and Maigraith had not broken free until she was well over a hundred. Even now, two centuries later, she compensated by dominating everyone she met. But she felt only contempt for those she dominated. The only people she respected were those who stood up to her.

  She might still kill them, Aviel thought wryly, but she did respect them.

  Maigraith gave her the recipe for the counter-potion and Aviel spent the next few days working on it with her customary care yet, at every step, praying it would fail. Why should Maigraith get what she wanted?

  Maigraith did not leave the workshop whilever Aviel was working. Maigraith checked every ingredient, measurement and process, and locked away the constituent scents at the end of each day. But when the scent potion was finally blended, and she had sniffed the specified amount, her face looked the same.

  ‘You’ve made it wrong,’ she said furiously.

  ‘You double-checked everything I did.’

  Maigraith sniffed the antidote three times, taking a greater dose each time, but her left cheek remained as rigid as ever.

  ‘Make it again.’

  Aviel re-read the method, checked all the scents and blended the scent potion anew. It did not work either and she could guess why – because she had willed it to fail. When using the Secret Art, the intentions of the maker mattered.

  Aviel’s expression must have given her away because Maigraith gave her a deeply suspicious look. She turned away, sweat prickling the back of her neck.

  Don’t gloat, fool!

  Maigraith was at her spy portal again, though the face Aviel saw out of the corner of an eye as she passed was not Rulke’s, but a far younger man.

  ‘Who’s that?’ she said, not expecting Maigraith to answer.

  ‘Skald, of course. The young battle mancer who found Flydd’s Histories.’

  ‘Why, of course?’

  ‘He’s famous now. Don’t you know anything about the war?’

  ‘How could I? My gaoler doesn’t see fit to tell me anything.’

  ‘The mouse snaps her tiny teeth in vain,’ sneered Maigraith. ‘Skald is brave, enterprising and fiercely determined. He could be just the man I need.’

  ‘And our enemy!’

  ‘He’s not my enemy.’

  ‘You sound as though you admire him.’

  ‘I admire anyone with the courage to overcome their cruel upbringing.’

  ‘Except me.’

  ‘Except you, mouse.’

  Aviel went closer, peering through the spy portal. ‘There’s a hint of Rulke about him. Is that why –?’

  Maigraith closed the portal, irritably. ‘Haven’t you got work to do?’

  Aviel returned to her workshop, thoughtfully. What was Maigraith up to now, and why was she being so defensive?

  Aviel turned over in bed and drew her knees up under her chin, but tonight no position was comfortable. She had to free herself from Maigraith’s thrall, yet could only do so by using a dark scent-potion on her. But would that be a step too far?

  A week ago, she would not even have considered it. And what if it made things worse, as Karan had when she had attacked Maigraith not long after Sulien first saw the Merdrun?

  Desperate to protect her daughter, Karan had dosed Maigraith with the addictive Whelm pain-killing drug hrux, but Maigraith had proved unusually sensitive and it had driven her out of her wits for many days. The attack had led to a rift between Karan and her old friend, Shand, Maigraith’s grandfather, and afterwards she had pursued Karan, Sulien and Llian relentlessly.

  What kind of scent potion, anyway? Aviel lit her lamp and flipped through the pages of Radizer’s Grimoire to the first of the Great Potions. It was unlikely that Maigraith would be affected by any of the lesser potions.

  Murderer’s Mephitis.

  Aviel recoiled so violently that she struck her head on the wall. She slammed the grimoire shut and thrust it away from her. Was she seriously considering murdering Maigraith?

  Of course not, she was just exploring options.

  Because she was stuck here with Maigraith, who never gave up. She would go after Lirriam again and, if Aviel did nothing, she would be complicit in her death too. No matter how Aviel looked at her situation, she always came back to the same place. Maigraith had to be stopped and she, Aviel, had to do it.

  She rolled onto her stomach, closed her eyes and steadfastly refused to think about scent potions. There must be something good happening in the world. She conjured up her last image of Wilm, the way he had moved and spoke just before he boarded the sky galleon, the scent of him, his courage and kindness. Her eyes misted. How she missed him …

  Her face grew hot as she remembered how he had turned away, and she contemplated the awful thought that he had given up on her. That he had gone off to fight, and probably to die, believing that she did not care about him. Her eyes stung. She cared more about him than anyone, but it was so very
hard to escape an upbringing where her whole family had used and betrayed her.

  She picked up the grimoire and opened it from the back. The final six leaves were blank, and as age-spotted and stained as the rest of the book.

  As she was turning the first of these pages, which had a rat-shaped brown blotch at the bottom as if dark beer had once been spilled there, she noticed faint squiggles in the body of the blotch. Could they be writing?

  Aviel held it up to her lamp, which did not help. She held the leaf above the lamp and the heat slowly revealed faint words there, in the same hand as the rest of the book. Radizer’s hand. He had written down a scent potion in invisible ink.

  A potion to rob a mancer of his or her gift for the Secret Art.

  Was this the answer? The words were already fading. She warmed the page and read the description again. The scent potion did not appear to be dangerous. It merely blocked (or removed or destroyed – the text was not clear) the victim’s ability to use the Art. And what could be the harm in turning Maigraith into an ordinary person?

  If Aviel did, and if Maigraith could no longer work magic, she would have to accept that she had no future with Rulke. It would do her good!

  Dare I?

  Aviel warmed the leaf again and re-read the method and the list of fourteen scents needed to blend the scent potion. She had most of them, and the three she lacked (the reek from the rotting head of a catfish, the smell of well-aged urine – she could get that from the former guards’ pissoir – and the pungency of gently heated horseradish) were easily come by …

  Worms wriggled across her scalp. This was a dire potion and making it would be taking a decisive step down the dark path. Aviel could justify destroying Maigraith’s gift for magic as a form of self-defence, or a necessary evil … yet evil it undoubtedly was.

  The lesser of two evils, surely.

  Three days later, working only when she knew Maigraith was away, the gift-blocking scent potion was complete. Now all she had to do was wait for a chance to use it. Aviel stoppered the phial tightly, put it in her pocket and went on with her slow, meticulous work on the rejuvenation potion, the most complicated and difficult one she had ever made. She had to act normally, because Maigraith was famously paranoid.

  That afternoon her chance came. Maigraith was at her spy portal, muttering imprecations. As Aviel peered over her shoulder, Lirriam drew Rulke close and stood up on tiptoes to kiss him on the mouth. An odd little shiver passed through Aviel. He smiled and left the room.

  ‘You harlot!’ Maigraith shrieked. ‘You man-stealing bitch! You’re dead!’

  She conjured another of those funnel gates, reached into the cedar box beside her chair for a round, crystal bottle, and set it on the table. It contained half a pint of a thick, red-brown, oily liquid, tendrils of which oozed sluggishly up from the surface as if trying to escape the bottle. It wasn’t anything Aviel had made, or had ever seen before, but Maigraith was more than capable of making all manner of potions and poisons.

  Do it now, while she’s distracted!

  Maigraith’s eyes were fixed on her rival. Aviel’s heart was thudding leadenly as she uncapped her phial and drew the prescribed amount of the gift-blocking potion, four drops, up into an eye dropper. No! Use less, in case she’s over-sensitive. As Maigraith began twisting out the tight stopper of her bottle, Aviel released two drops of scent potion onto the collar of her gown.

  ‘If you value your life, keep back,’ Maigraith said irritably, without looking around.

  Aviel stepped backwards, holding the eyedropper behind her in fingers slick with sweat. If Maigraith realised what she had done she would not live one minute past the completion of the rejuvenation scent potion.

  ‘What’s that smell?’ said Maigraith.

  ‘Mice,’ Aviel lied. Her potion smelled like a mouse-infested cupboard.

  Maigraith held her crystal bottle at arm’s length and, very carefully, twisted the stopper back and forth to free it. The contents must be deadly.

  Suddenly her hands shook and she set the crystal bottle down, hard. ‘What …?’ she mumbled.

  She reached for the bottle again but knocked it over and a small quantity of the eager red-brown fluid oozed out from around the stopper. Maigraith froze, staring at it, then pushed her chair backwards.

  ‘Wha …? Wha …?’

  The spy portal and the funnel gate vanished. Aviel slipped the eye dropper into its case, put it in her pocket with the stoppered phial, and hastily stood the crystal bottle up.

  Maigraith rose jerkily to her feet, turned halfway around, then her aged face cracked. ‘It’s … gone!’ she screamed.

  She fell to her knees, writhing and shrieking. Aviel dragged her out of the salon and down to her sleeping room, then pushed her onto the bed. Maigraith fell like a stone and lay still, her mouth open in a scream that went on and on.

  Aviel returned to the salon, wearing two pairs of gloves and plugs up her nostrils, and cleaned Maigraith’s red-brown fluid off the table, using wet rags that she dropped in a bucket. The rags began to fizz and char. She put the crystal bottle in the bucket, carried it out and down a side road to a dried-up well, and dropped it in, plus the gloves. Afterwards she washed her hands five times, just to be sure, and flushed her own potion down the sink.

  When she checked on Maigraith an hour later she was still screaming.

  What have I done? thought Aviel. Have I driven her insane? Is she going to die?

  Am I as big a monster as she is?

  45

  I Will Never Drink A Life Again

  After failing to assassinate Flydd, Skald had expected the magiz to drink his life. And Dagog had been preparing to, right there in the command tent, when Durthix changed his mind and ordered that Skald be spared.

  Dagog’s rage was apocalyptic, and for a long, desperate interval Skald thought the magiz was going to defy Durthix and drink his life anyway. He probably would have, had Durthix not gestured to his guards, who formed a circle of blades around Skald.

  ‘He failed!’ snarled Dagog.

  ‘Brilliantly, heroically, self-sacrificingly,’ said Durthix. ‘No one has ever demonstrated One for All more compellingly, Magiz, and he’s worth far more to us alive.’

  Skald had subsequently spent six days in the healing station. Yet, as he began to recover, he wondered why Durthix had bothered. Why not let him die a hero? Or a failure, if that was how Skald was regarded, given that Flydd was still alive.

  But Skald had been attended night and day by the Merdrun’s best healers, and the magiz had resentfully cast spell after spell, trying undo the damage Skald had done to himself in his desperate escape. Durthix had visited twice, the second time bringing a copy of Flydd’s Histories of the Lyrinx War for Skald to study. Why? What did Durthix want from him?

  The healing station was a long yellow tent with a canvas floor and a high roof held up by a central line of poles, painted blue and marked with the Merdrun glyph in black at the top. Stretchers were spaced along each side, each holding a gravely ill soldier. It was draughty and cold, and reeked of septic wounds and a variety of poultices.

  It was also noisy, though most of the noise came from outside. The distant click of thousands of hammers on thousands of chisels, the bellowing of overseers, the crash and crack of falling stone, the perfectly synchronised footsteps of squads of marching troops.

  Inside the tent it was almost silent. Merdrun learned as children to ignore pain, and only excruciating agony could induce a soldier to cry out. Though Skald was in agony during his initially brief lucid moments, and tormented by nightmarish hallucinations, he had more to prove than any of his fellow patients. He endured the tearing pain in his guts with no more than an occasional stifled moan.

  At the end of the sixth day he was able to don his uniform and stand up shakily by his stretcher to wait for the high commander. When Durthix finally came, Skald was shivering and his toes were like sticks of ice in his boots. He could not remember being cold on Santhenar
before. Truly, he was a miserable shadow of the soldier he had once been.

  ‘You have cost us dear,’ said Durthix. ‘You had better be worth it, Captain.’

  ‘I’m not,’ said Skald. ‘I failed.’

  All the self-confidence had been burned out of him, and all ambition. His guts felt torn to pieces and his jelly knees wanted to fold under him. A soldier’s strength was valued above all other qualities save courage, and Skald’s weakness made him contemptible in his own eyes. Almost worthless.

  ‘Are you questioning my decision to save you, Captain Skald?’

  ‘No,’ he whispered, sounding timid and unworthy. ‘No, High Commander!’ he said, too forcefully, and had to support himself one of the side poles of the tent. His head spun and he was forced to gasp the shameful words, ‘High Commander, may I sit down?’

  Durthix’s thick upper lip curled, but he brought a folding chair.

  Skald sat down hard, still holding the pole for fear of falling on his face. His teeth chattered. ‘W-why is it so cold?’

  ‘You were gated to Skyrock in a coma. This place is 8,000 feet up.’ Durthix inspected Skald dispassionately. ‘I’m told you will never again be fit for active duty.’

  Skald almost howled, but managed to choke the ruinous emotions off.

  ‘Are – are you dismissing me from the army?’ he said desperately.

  ‘The means you used to escape capture was an act of genius. You did something that has never been attempted before – and pulled it off. At great cost to yourself, but also with an unexpected benefit.’

  Skald felt strong enough to let go of the tent pole. ‘A benefit, High Commander?’

  ‘By partially drinking your own life, and successfully using that power to create a gate, you amplified your gift for mancery. You offer us new possibilities, Captain.’

  ‘Thank you, High Commander,’ said Skald. ‘What –?’