by Ian Irvine
Maigraith was Skald’s biggest obstacle now, if she had recovered. She could not know he had captured the construct, and if she thought Rulke was flying away with it, and Lirriam, there was no telling what she might do.
While Tiaan sensed her way into the mechanisms, Skald dragged his corpse-like body up to the lookout platform and peered over the coaming. Maigraith was still in the shadows by the side wall, but she was sitting up now and had Lirriam’s black stone in hand – Skald could see the distinctive deep red glow inside it. She must have killed Pannilie.
What did Maigraith intend to do with the stone? Make another gate? Lirriam had made a gate effortlessly, but Pannilie had not succeeded in making another. Could Maigraith make one inside Alcifer? Probably.
She rose and moved stealthily towards the ladder.
Skald put his head down through the hatch and hissed at Llian. ‘Pull up the ladder. That handle, there! Turn it!’
Llian was slow to react.
‘Now! Or die!’
Llian stumbled to the side of the cabin and turned a handle shaped like a windlass. The flexible ladder retreated into a slot in the curving metal side of the construct. Tiaan pulled back on one of the levers in front of her and the massive craft rose a few yards.
Maigraith ran forwards, but propped, evidently realising that she was in mortal danger if it fell again. She headed for the side wall and scrambled up a spiralling metal stair until she was level with the cabin of the construct.
She was going to attack, and Skald did not have the strength to stop her.
Aviel watched in increasing dismay as Skald entered the construct and, after a titanic struggle with Rulke, took control. Now Maigraith was creeping up the stair below her. If she came high enough she would see Aviel, who dared not move again.
Maigraith stopped at a height where she could see into the cabin. She was gazing at Lirriam’s black stone, perhaps trying to fathom how it worked. She touched it to her forehead. Her head rocked back. The stone glowed a darker red in the centre, as if a flame burned inside it.
Skald was a bloody, lurching wreck; it would not take much to strike him down. Then Maigraith would be free to find Lirriam and kill her. Aviel had to stop her.
Maigraith leaned out over the railing, her right arm out-thrust and her bony fingers pointing at Skald. The only weapon Aviel had was her metal water bottle, which contained a couple of pints of water. She unclipped it, rose slowly, aimed carefully and dropped it.
The water bottle fell twenty feet and struck Maigraith on the head. She toppled, slid head-first down the tight spiral of the stair and onto the floor, her feet coming to rest on the third tread.
She wasn’t moving. Had Aviel saved Lirriam by killing Maigraith?
Aviel scrunched up on the step, wrapped her arms around her head and rocked back and forth. Why couldn’t she ever do anything right?
As the construct rose in the air, Karan had a very bad feeling. ‘Xervish, that’s not Rulke at the controls.’
‘It’s Tiaan!’ cried Nish. ‘What the hell is she doing here?’
And Llian was seated beside her. Karan’s eyes stung. He was alive!
‘Rulke’s on the floor,’ said Maelys. ‘Tied up.’
‘There’s the assassin, up on top,’ said Nish. ‘Skald’s forcing Tiaan to fly the construct.’
Karan squinted at Llian. Why was he sitting so close to her? Suspicion burned; she could not prevent it. Was his arm around her? Yes, it was! ‘Stop them!’
‘I haven’t got the power to stop a construct,’ Flydd said dully.
Tiaan was a brilliant woman. Attractive, too. Llian would certainly be drawn to her. ‘Block her power. Or daze her. Do something!’
Flydd sighted along his staff but swore and lowered it.
‘What’s the matter now?’ Karan shrieked.
She had to stop this before it went too far. Or had it already? Tiaan was a legend of the war with a thousand tales to tell, and the way Llian was looking at her they might have been lovers. Were they? He’s mine! she wanted to shriek, but Llian hadn’t been hers for a long time, and it was mostly her fault.
‘If I do anything to stop Tiaan,’ said Flydd, ‘the construct is liable to fall out of the air. And from that height it’ll tear through the floor and keep falling. Perhaps bring the whole building down –’
Karan had a flash of the thapter plummeting towards that rocky hilltop, crashing and burning.
‘I can’t do anything,’ said Flydd. ‘It’s over.’
‘No, look!’ Nish was pointing to Skald. ‘He can barely stand up. Blast him down and the construct is ours.’
It’ll always be Rulke’s, Karan thought. But if we rescue him, he’ll be grateful. And when I get my hands on Tiaan –
She cut the thought off. Llian was the wronged one, after all. But even so –
Flydd sighted on Skald, who was partly concealed by the coaming. Karan held her breath.
He blasted. Skald disappeared.
‘Got him!’ Karan yelled.
Flydd didn’t say anything.
‘You did get him, didn’t you?’
Skald was bracing for Maigraith’s attack when she fell, slid down the spiralling stairs and lay still. He turned and saw four people on the balcony on the opposite side of the hall, and one of them was Flydd. Had he taken her down?
Skald’s nemesis, Karan, was beside Flydd and they were only fifty feet away. Had Skald been at the controls he would have slammed the construct into the balcony and smashed it to bits, completing the assassination mission he had failed at last time, and triumphantly ending the resistance.
But he could do nothing, and Flydd was raising his staff. Pointing it.
Skald ducked below the coaming. The construct was rising rapidly now. Tiaan was planning to splatter him against the glass roof and fly away, to freedom. What a prize that would be for the enemy.
No time to descend the ladder. Skald dropped through the hole in the platform and pulled the hatch down.
It slammed with a clang, his weight tore his fingers off the handle, and he fell and hit the floor hard. Agony tore through his belly. He heaved up another clot of old, brown blood. Had it been bright red and fresh, it would signal that he was dying.
The coaming shattered the glass roof, hurling shards and metal everywhere. Skald lay on his side and attempted to cast a healing on his guts.
Had it worked? He could not tell, though the pain was enough to make the most stoic of Merdrun scream. He fought it down and checked on Llian, who looked shifty. He wasn’t much of a threat, but Skald immobilised him and he fell off his seat. Skald could not afford the least of distractions now.
Tiaan was staring at him in horror.
‘To Skyrock,’ choked Skald. ‘If you want to see your children again, do exactly as I say. I don’t care if I die, and if my people can’t have the construct and the Source, no one can.’
She seemed to take the message.
As the construct tore through the skylight. Maelys dived to one side and Flydd to the other, but Karan just stood there, too numb to take it in. Tiaan no longer mattered. Llian would soon be in the enemy’s hands and they would kill him, slowly and cruelly, because he had helped to thwart them in their previous invasion.
Nish jerked Karan sideways so hard that they both fell. A yard-long triangle of broken glass speared through the space she had just vacated and shattered on the floor of the balcony. It would have cut her in two. She stared at it, shuddering, unable to move. Unable to think clearly. How had it all gone so wrong?
‘Back!’ yelled Flydd. ‘Roof’s caving in!’
Nish dragged her away and around the corner. A falling beam struck the balcony, breaking the front half off and tumbling it down into the gloom below. He let out a string of oaths, most of which Karan had never heard before.
‘If we’d been five minutes sooner …’ she said. ‘Even two minutes.’
‘They might crash,’ said Nish. ‘Tiaan hasn’t flown in years. Might not hav
e the strength for it.’
‘Llian is on board!’ she snarled.
‘Sorry! Didn’t think.’
She felt unutterably weary. It had all been for nothing, yet again. Where had he met Tiaan, anyway? How long had it been going on? She tried to tell herself that it was irrelevant now, but the agony kept cycling.
‘It’s … alright,’ she mumbled. ‘Saved my life.’
Flydd supported himself against a wall. ‘How did Skald get in?’
‘We got in.’
‘But Alcifer was designed to protect against Rulke’s enemies, and the Charon’s greatest enemies have always been the Merdrun. He would have had the very strongest defences against them.’
Nish shrugged. ‘What does it matter?’
‘It matters.’
Flydd went back around the corner to the point where the front of the balcony had broken off and stood there, staring through the dust towards the far wall. Karan crept up behind him, as far as she dared. The remainder of the balcony was cracked in a dozen places.
‘What is it, Xervish?’ she said.
‘Someone was crouched on the stair, in the shadows. Trying to hide.’
She edged up beside him. ‘I wasn’t looking that way.’
‘In my line of business, you have to notice everything.’
He turned, fists clenched by his sides, eyes closed as if trying to recreate the scene. ‘It was Aviel!’
Karan looked down. The stairs had torn away from the wall and there was no sign of anyone on the floor. ‘What would she be doing here?’
‘There’s only one way she could have got here – by coming with Maigraith. Or following her.’
‘Why would –? Ah!’
‘Ah, indeed. Maigraith knows Alcifer backwards and she can make gates where no one else can. She must have let Skald in.’
‘Why would she betray Rulke to his enemies?’
‘She wouldn’t. It must’ve been part of a plan that went badly wrong.’
‘What do we do now?’
‘We haven’t lost yet. Come on!’
Maigraith’s arm moved; her right hand reached out and gripped the side of the stair. She was alive! Aviel did not know whether to be glad or sorry.
The construct rose abruptly, and she saw what was going to happen. She scrambled down the turns of the stair, the structure quivering underfoot, and grabbed Maigraith just as the great craft struck the roof.
Where to shelter? Under the stair? No, it might collapse. There, a door in the side wall. She yanked it open, got Maigraith through with a series of heaves, kicked it shut behind her and crouched with her arms up over her head.
A monumental crash as tons of glass and metal hit the broken floor outside. A metal beam tore the door off its hinges, speared past within inches of Aviel’s left shoulder and embedded itself in the far wall. Splinters of glass peppered her back and arms. Outside, metal tore with an ear-stabbing groan and something massive hit the hall floor and rolled away, clicking and clacking. The staircase, she thought. Was the whole building going to collapse?
The crashing and clanging stopped and there was silence apart from her heavy breathing. Her back and right shoulder stung in a dozen places. She picked out blood-tipped splinters of glass and flicked them away.
Maigraith sat up, rubbing her head. She looked even older and more wretched now.
‘Lucky the stupid little stickybeak followed you,’ Aviel said. ‘Or you’d be dead.’
‘What happened?’
‘Construct burst up through the skylight.’
Maigraith gave her a sharp glance ‘Who was flying it?’
‘A woman. Mid-thirties. Olive skin. Short, dark hair.’
‘Tiaan, I expect. What about Rulke?’
‘After you cast that stunning spell on him, and it backfired, it gave Skald the chance to get aboard.’ Aviel wanted Maigraith to be in no doubt that her folly had caused all this.
‘And?’
‘He must have overcome Rulke.’
‘What – about – Lirriam?’ Maigraith said savagely.
‘I didn’t see her.’
Maigraith laid her head on her arms and wept, but after a minute she stood up, shakily, and wiped her face. She looked older than ever, and harder.
‘You saved my life again,’ she said to Aviel.
‘Yes.’
‘I’m not grateful.’
‘I never expected you would be.’
‘Skald betrayed me,’ said Maigraith.
‘And you betrayed him. You’re even.’
Maigraith rubbed the top of her head. ‘Something hit me.’
Aviel tried to keep her face blank. Her water bottle was buried under the fallen ceiling. Nothing could be proved – not that proof mattered to Maigraith. ‘When the roof fell in, debris went everywhere.’
She picked out a shard curved like a skeet’s throat-ripping talon, and held it out.
Maigraith gave her a deeply suspicious look. ‘Take me home. Then get that dammed rejuvenation potion done!’
As Aviel led her away, a dreadful thought struck her. By knocking Maigraith out, and allowing Skald to get away with the construct, had she given the Merdrun the weapon that would win them the war?
58
Can’t Do It Anymore. Want To Die
Though Skald felt sure he was dying, he could not relax his iron self-control. If by some miracle Tiaan managed to keep this massive construct in the air, and he delivered it and the prisoners to Skyrock, his father’s cowardice would be forgotten. Not even the magiz could touch him then.
But it was so very hard. Every bone from the top of his skull to the ends of his toes throbbed as though nails had been hammered through it. Every organ felt as if it had been torn open – even his eyeballs. All he wanted was to fall down and close his eyes and let everything go.
The temptation must be resisted. If his watch on Rulke faltered, even for a minute, the Great Enemy would find a way to free himself.
Endure! You can do it. You must! This saves the True Purpose. This proves you.
Llian was tied up and no threat, but Tiaan was another matter. In the Lyrinx War she had been brave, daring, an original thinker with a conscience, and she knew constructs inside and out. She would have recognised this one from its exposed parts long before Rulke moved the walls that had concealed the whole, and she probably had a plan to seize it and take it to Flydd.
Or to deny it to the Merdrun if her plan failed?
Her face had lit up when Skald gave his word to free her and send her home, but the joy had not lasted. Perhaps she thought the Merdrun could never be trusted. Given the casual atrocities they had inflicted on so many cities, so many people, she was right to think so, and it made her dangerous.
Only Tiaan and Rulke could fly this mighty craft and, if she lost hope, she could destroy it in a moment by releasing her mind-link to the controls. Skald would not have time to free Rulke before the crash turned them all to jelly.
How could he ensure she followed orders? Another Merdrun might have threatened her children, but the thought sent Skald back to the basement and the sad little bodies of Tataste’s daughter and son, still clinging together in death. Innocents, dead because he had killed their mother. His eyes stung, and the forbidden emotions that had passed to him as he had drunk her life almost overwhelmed him.
It reminded him of the horror in Tiaan’s eyes when he took the life of Sus-magiz Ghiv. She was afraid of dying that way.
‘I will keep to my promise – as long as you fly directly to Skyrock,’ he said. ‘But if you decide to end us all, know that I will drink your life on the way down.’
Her short hair stood up; her soft mouth twisted. ‘I – I will fly true. For as long as I am able.’
Skald perched on the seat beside her, where he could also watch Rulke and Llian, and drew on the power stolen from Ghiv to strengthen himself. He could not numb the ever-growing pain, though. Nor the fear that, despite all he had done, he was going to fail.
‘What’s the plan?’ said Karan, struggling to keep up as they ran back to the sky galleon.
Flydd did not reply until it was in the air and racing north-east. ‘Skald can only be heading for Skyrock, many hours away. We’re going to shadow him.’
‘And then?’
‘Fly above the construct and force it down,’ said Nish.
‘Too risky,’ said Flydd.
‘Why?’
‘Use your imagination, Nish!’ Flydd snapped. ‘Tiaan’s got to channel a staggering amount of power to keep it in the air. Far more power than she would ever have channelled flying a thapter, and I won’t do anything to make it worse for her. Besides, I’ll be astounded if she lasts an hour.’
‘What do you mean by lasts?’ Karan said quietly.
‘Falls unconscious; has her mind burned out; has a stroke; drops dead,’ said Flydd. ‘They amount to the same thing.’
‘The construct crashing and killing everyone inside.’
‘If she sees her end coming, she might bring it down to the ground first. That’s my hope; my only chance.’
‘Skald’s a desperate man,’ said Maelys. ‘He’ll destroy it rather than letting us get it.’
‘He was in a bad way,’ said Flydd. ‘He might collapse before she does. And if he does, we take it. We’ll stay well back. Hopefully he won’t realise we’ve followed.’
Only an hour had passed, of the eight-hour flight to Skyrock, and already Tiaan was showing the strain. Her skin had a grey-green tinge and a tremor in her right hand made it difficult to use the controls.
‘What’s the matter?’ Skald said to her.
‘Aftersickness,’ she said in a whisper.
‘So soon?’
‘Swore off – Art – many years ago.’ She was struggling to control the construct and talk at the same time, not a good sign. ‘Power – burning. Head splitting. Can’t think.’
‘Then how are you flying?’
‘Instinct and muscle memory,’ she croaked. ‘Can’t last.’
