by Ian Irvine
“They’re nearly through,” she said, white-faced. “Where are we going, Lord?”
Benn still held Rix’s severed hand in his own small, freckled hand. His wide grey eyes were fixed on Rix’s crusted stump, which was still ebbing blood. Benn caught Rix’s gaze, flushed and looked away.
Rix gestured to a broad crack, low down in the wall at the back of the salon. The edges resembled bubbly melted cheese, the plaster and stonework etched away and stained in mottled greens and yellows.
He hacked away the foamy muck to reveal fresh stone, though when he flicked the clinging stuff off the knife the blade was so corroded that it snapped. He tossed it into the rubble. Benn ran back and fetched him another knife, which Rix sheathed.
“Go through,” said Rix. “Don’t touch the edges.”
“What is that stuff?” said Benn.
“Alkoyl. Mad Wil squirted it around the crack to stop us following him.”
“What’s alkoyl?”
“An alchymical fluid, the most dangerous in the world. Dissolves anything. Even stone, even metal – even the flesh of a ten-year-old boy.” Rix took Benn’s free hand and helped him through.
“We’ll need a lantern,” said Glynnie.
“No, they’d track us by its smell,” said Rix.
He handed the boy a glowstone disc, though its light was so feeble it barely illuminated his arm. Tobry, an accomplished magian, could have coaxed more light from it, but… Rix avoided the rest of the thought.
“We’ll need more light than that,” said Glynnie.
She bundled some pieces of wood together from a broken chair, tied them together with strips of fabric, tied on more fabric at one end and shoved it in her pack.
They went through, holding their breath. The crack snaked ever down, shortly intersecting a network of other cracks that appeared to have freshly opened – and might close again just as suddenly.
“If they shut, they’ll squeeze the juice out of us like a turnip,” whispered Glynnie.
Rix stopped, frowning. “Can you smell alkoyl?”
“No,” she said softly, “but I can smell stink-damp.”
“That’s bad.”
Stink-damp smelled like rotten eggs. The deadly vapour seeped up from deep underground and collected in caverns, from where it was piped to the street lamps of Caulderon and the great houses such as Palace Ricinus. Stink-damp was heavier than air, however. It settled in sumps, basements and other low places, and sometimes exploded.
“I can smell alkoyl,” said Benn.
“Good man,” said Rix. “Can you follow it?”
“I think so.”
Benn sniffed the air and moved down the crack.
“Why are we following alkoyl?” said Glynnie.
“Wil was carrying a tube of it,” said Rix. “He also stole Lyf’s iron book, and if anyone can find a safe way out of here, Wil the Sump can, the little weasel.”
“Isn’t he dangerous?”
“Not as dangerous as I am.”
The boast was hollow. Down here, Rix’s size put him at a disadvantage, whereas Wil could hide in any crevice and reach out to a naked throat with those powerful strangler’s hands.
They squeezed down cracks so narrow that Rix could not take a full breath, under a tilted slab of stone that quivered at the touch, then through an oval stonework pipe coated with feathery mould. Dust tickled the back of his throat; he suppressed a sneeze.
After half an hour, Benn could no longer smell alkoyl.
“Have we gone the wrong way?” said Rix. “Or is Wil in hiding, waiting to strike?”
Neither Glynnie nor Benn answered. They were at the intersection of two low passages that burrowed like rat holes through native rock. Many tunnels were known to run under the palace and the ancient city of Caulderon, some dating back thousands of years to when it had been the enemy’s royal city, Lucidand; others had been forgotten long ago. Rix’s wrist, which had struck many obstacles in the dark, was oozing blood and throbbing mercilessly.
“Lord?” said Glynnie.
“Yes?”
“I don’t think anyone’s following. Let me bandage your wrist.”
“It hardly matters,” he said carelessly. “Someone is bound to kill me before an infection could.”
“Sit down!” she snapped. “Hold out your arm.”
An angry retort sprang to his lips, but he did not utter it. He had been about to scathe Glynnie the way his late mother, Lady Ricinus, would have done. But Glynnie had never done other than to serve as best she could. She was the worthy one; he should be serving her.
“Not here. They can come at us four ways. We need a hiding place with an escape route.”
It took another half hour of creeping and crawling before they found somewhere safe, a vault excavated from the bedrock. It must have dated back to ancient times, judging by the stonework and the crumbling wall carvings. A second stone door stood half open on the other side, its hinges frozen with rust. To the left, water seeped from a crack into a basin carved into the wall, its overflow leaving orange streaks down the stone.
“I don’t like this place,” said Benn, huddling on a dusty stone bench, one of two.
“Shh,” said Glynnie.
In the far right corner a pile of ash was scattered with wood charcoal and pieces of burnt bone, as if someone had cooked meat there and tossed the bones on the fire afterwards.
Rix perched on the other bench and extended his wrist to Glynnie. “Do you know how to treat wounds?”
“I can do everything.” It was a statement, not a boast.
“But you’re just – you’re a maidservant. How do you know healing?”
She pursed her lips. “I watch. I listen. I learn. Benn, bring the glowstone. Rix, hold this.”
Gingerly, as though she would have preferred not to touch it, she pressed Maloch’s hilt into Rix’s left hand.
“Why?” he said.
“It’s supposed to protect you.”
“Only against magery.”
She knelt in the dust before him, then took a bottle of priceless brandy from her pack, Rix’s last surviving bottle, and rinsed her hands with it. She laid a little bundle containing rags, needle and thread and scissors on her pack, poured a slug of brandy onto a piece of linen and began to clean his stump.
Rix tried not to groan. Blood began to drip. By the time she finished, Glynnie was red to the elbows.
He leaned back against the wall and closed his eyes, for once content to do as he was told.
“Hold his wrist steady, Benn,” said Glynnie.
A pair of smaller, colder hands took hold of Rix’s lower arm. He heard Glynnie moving about but did not open his eyes. She began to tear linen into strips. Liquid gurgled and he caught a whiff of the brandy, then a chink as she set down a metal cup.
“I could do with a drop of that,” he murmured.
Glynnie gave a disapproving sniff. She was washing her hands again.
“Steady now,” she said. “Hold the sword. This could hurt.”
She began to spread something over his stump, an unguent that stung worse than the brandy. Rix’s fingers clenched around Maloch’s hilt.
“Ready, Benn?” said Glynnie.
“Yes,” he whispered.
Her hand steadied his wrist. There came a gentle, painful pressure on the stump. Where his fingers touched the hilt, they tingled like a nettle sting. Then Rix felt a burning pain as though she had poured brandy over his stump and set it alight. His eyes sprang open.
Glynnie had pressed his severed hand against the stump, and now the pain was running up his arm and down into his fingers. Cold blue flames flickered around the amputation site then, with the most shocking pain Rix had ever experienced, the bones of his severed hand ground against his wrist bones – and seemed to fuse.
He had the good sense not to move, though he could not hold back the agony. It burst out in a bellow that sifted dust down from the roof onto them, like a million tiny drops falling through a
sunbeam.
“What are you doing to me?”
CHAPTER 2
Benn let go and scrambled backwards into the dark, out of harm’s way.
Glynnie went so pale that the freckles stood out down her nose. She swayed backwards as though afraid Rix was going to strike her, but her bloody hands were rock-steady, one on his wrist, the other on his partly rejoined hand.
“Don’t move!” she said.
Hope and fear went to war in Rix. The foolish, foolish hope that Glynnie knew what she was doing and could give him his right hand back. And the gut-crawling fear that it would go desperately wrong and would be worse than having a stump on the end of his arm. He clutched the hilt of Maloch so hard that it hurt – and prayed.
It was impossible to keep still. The pain was a dog mauling his wrist, splintering the bones. Then, out of nowhere, he felt his amputated hand as an ice-cold, dangling extremity. He felt the blood oozing sluggishly through each of the collapsed veins, dilating them one by one.
His hand was no longer cold, no longer grey-blue. A warm pinkness was spreading through it. Red scabs formed in three places across his wrist and slowly extended along the amputation line until they ran most of the way around, though a spot near his wrist bone, and another underneath, still ebbed blood.
His little finger twitched; pins and needles pricked all over his hand. And then – Rix flexed his index finger, and it moved. Tears sprang to his eyes.
“How did you do that?” he said hoarsely. “Who are you?”
Glynnie shook her head, slumped onto the other bench and wiped her brow with her forearm, leaving a streak of blood there. “I’m not a healer, nor a magian – just a maidservant.”
“I don’t understand…”
Glynnie tilted the metal cup towards him. The bottom was covered with a smear of blood.
“What’s that for?” said Rix.
“It’s the cup Tali used to try and heal Tobry. With her healing blood.”
“But she didn’t heal him. He’s dead.”
“Maybe shifters can’t be healed,” said Glynnie. “But Tali’s blood can heal ordinary wounds. That’s all I did.”
“Go on.”
“I covered both edges of your wrist with the blood left in the cup. It was frozen; I had to warm it in my hands. I pushed your hand and wrist together and held them. That’s all.”
Rix’s other hand was still clenched tightly around Maloch’s hilt. He let go. “You also used the protective magery of my sword.”
“I didn’t use it,” said Glynnie. “I only put it where it could do you some good.”
“You gave me back my hand. I can never thank you —”
“It could get infected,” said Glynnie. “I’ll have to look after it.”
She stood up, swaying with exhaustion, and Rix realised how much he had taken her for granted. Why should the great Lord Rixium notice a little, freckled maidservant? Palace Ricinus had employed a hundred maids, each as replaceable as every other.
“Sit down,” he said, reaching up to her. “Rest. Let me wait on you.”
Her eyes widened; a blotchy flush spread across her cheeks. “You can’t wait on me.”
Glynnie washed the blood off her hands and forearms in the basin niche, then took a rag from her pack and scrubbed Benn’s grubby face and hands. He was half asleep and made no protest. She cleaned her blood-spotted garments as best she could, took stale bread and hard cheese from her pack, cut a portion for Rix and another for her brother, then a little for herself. She resumed her seat, nibbled at a crust, leaned back and closed her eyes. The flush slowly faded.
Her eyes sprang open. “Lord, we got to fly. They could be creeping after us right now.”
“Maloch will warn me. Rest. You’ve been up all night.”
“So have you.”
“I couldn’t sleep even if I wanted to. Hush now. I need to think.”
It was a lie. So much was whirling through his mind that he was incapable of coherent thought. Rix clenched his right fist, for the pleasure of being able to do so. It did not feel as natural as his left hand, and the scabbed seam around his wrist would leave a raised scar, but he had his hand back, and it worked. He could ask for nothing more.
“How did you know it would rejoin, Glynnie?”
“Didn’t. But the captain cut your hand off with that sword…”
“Yes?” he said when she did not go on.
“It’s supposed to protect you. So I thought… I thought it might not have severed your hand on all the levels…”
“What do you mean, all the levels?”
“I don’t know. Heard it mentioned by the chancellor’s chief magian one time… when…”
“When you were watching and listening?” said Rix.
“Servants spend half their time waiting,” said Glynnie. “I like to make sense of things. I thought, if your hand hadn’t been severed on all the levels, it might join up.”
He rested his back against the wall. Though it was deep winter in Caulderon, this far below the palace it was pleasantly warm. He raised his hand. Two places were still ebbing blood, though they were smaller than before. The healing was almost complete.
He closed his eyes for a minute, but felt himself sinking into a dreamy haze and forced them open. The enemy were too many and too clever. It would not take them long to discover which way he had gone, and if he were asleep he might miss Maloch’s warning.
He rose, paced across the square vault and back. Then again and again. His eyes were accustomed to the dimness now and the glowstone shed light into the corners of the vault. The stonework was unlike anything he had seen before. The wall stone was as smooth as plaster, yet the door frame, and each corner of the wall, was shaped from undressed stone, crudely shaped with pick and chisel. Though odd, it seemed right.
These walls are crying out for a mural, he thought, and his hand rose involuntarily to the wall, as though he held a brush. He cursed, remembered that there was a child present and bit the oaths off. Again his hand rose. Painting had been his solace in many of the worst times of his childhood, and Rix longed for that solace now.
“Lord?” said Glynnie, softly.
“It’s all right. I’ll wake you if anything happens. Sleep now.”
She trudged across, holding out a long object, like a stick or baton, though it took a while for him to recognise it as one of his paintbrushes.
“Thought you might need it,” she said.
“After I finished the picture of the murder cellar, I swore I’d never paint again.”
“Painting is your life, Lord.”
“That life is over.”
“It might help to heal you.”
He took the brush. His restored hand felt like a miracle, but it would take a far greater one to heal the inner man who had betrayed his mother and helped to bring down his house.
Yet if he could lose himself in his art, even for a few minutes, it would do more for him than a night’s sleep. Rix set down the brush, since he had no paint, and looked for something he could use to sketch on the wall. There was charcoal in the ashes of the ancient campfire, though when he picked it up the pieces crumbled in his hand.
Behind the ashes he spied several lengths of bone charcoal. He reached for a piece the length of his hand and the thickness of his middle finger. His fingers and thumb took a second to close around it, then locked and he began to sketch on the wall. His hand lacked its previous dexterity so he drew with sweeps of his arm.
He had no idea what he was drawing. This was often the case when he began – it worked better if he did not think about the subject. On one notable occasion he had done the first sketch blindfolded, and the resulting painting had been one of his best. The chancellor had called it a masterpiece.
It had also been a divination of the future, and Hightspall’s future was bleak enough already. If there was worse to come, he did not want to know about it in advance.
As he worked, Rix tried to work on an escape plan. It would
not be easy, for the enemy occupied the city and guarded all exits. They knew what he looked like and, being one of the biggest men in Caulderon, he had no hope of disguising himself. There were many tunnels and passages, of course, and some led out of the city, but the enemy were masters of the subterranean world and he had little hope of escaping them there. The tunnels would be patrolled by jackal shifters and other shifters. They could sniff him out a hundred yards away.
That only left the lake. Having dwelt underground for well over a thousand years, the Cythonians could have little knowledge of boats, while Rix had been sailing since he could walk. And many forgotten drains led to the lake. Some had been exposed by the great tidal wave several days ago, burst open by the pressure of water. If he could get Glynnie and Benn onto a boat, they would have a hope.
The worn length of bone charcoal snapped. He selected another from the ashes and sketched on.
If he succeeded in escaping, where could he go? Not over the sea; Hightspall was almost ice-locked. For centuries the ice sheets had been spreading up from the southern pole to surround the land, as they had already enveloped the long, mountainous island called Suden.
Southern Hightspall was mostly open farmland that offered few hiding places; his way must be to the rugged west or the mountainous north-east.
He had lost everything, but the chancellor had also given him something – the Herovian heritage Rix had not known he had. He ran his fingers along the weathered words down Maloch’s blade – Heroes must fight to preserve the race. Who were the Herovians, anyway? They had come here two thousand years ago on the First Fleet, a persecuted minority following a path set down in their sacred book, the Immortal Text, searching for their Promised Realm.
They had been led by Axil Grandys, the founder of Hightspall, and his allies who together made up the Five Herovians, or Five Heroes as they were to become known.
“It’s beautiful,” sighed Glynnie. “Where is it?”
Rix focused on his sketch, almost afraid to look. It showed a pretty glade by a winding stream, the water so clear that cobbles in the stream bed could clearly be seen. Wildflowers dotted the grass. Hoary old trees framed the glade and in the distance was a vista of snowy mountains.
