by Ian Irvine
Tali ran down to the back of the chamber, to the racks and crates she had seen earlier. Her lungs were burning now, her eyes watering so badly that she could barely see. She stuffed half a dozen grenadoes into her pack, strapped on a belt of death-lashes and plodded back to the wall.
“Stand back!” she yelled through the biggest crack.
The hammering stopped. Tali hurled the first of her grenadoes at the centre of the wall, where it was cracked from Holm’s earlier blast. Boom! The centre of the wall crazed. She hurled the second grenado at the base, a third of the wall fell away and she saw the desperate Pale on the other side. They kicked and smashed the broken stone out of the way and burst through, slipping and skidding on the bloody drive.
What a pitiful remnant they were. Tali peered through, trying to count the ones up the drive. They numbered twelve hundred at most, less than half of those who had followed her out of the Empound only hours ago. Many were injured and all looked exhausted. The rebellion could not last much longer.
Radl was at their head, wounded in many places and trembling with weariness, but the light had not gone out in her eyes. And, to Tali’s joy, Holm was beside her.
“This way,” said Tali. “There are grenadoes and all kinds of other weapons down the back, in those crates.” She pointed. “Hurry! There’s a ramp on the other side – they may come that way.”
“Did you do that?” said Radl.
“What?”
“Knock down three thousand of the enemy.”
“I broke a great sunstone,” said Tali. “Nearly killed me.”
“You saved us. Without that reprieve, they would have slaughtered us all.”
To Tali’s astonishment, Radl, her enemy since childhood, threw her arms around her. After a few seconds she broke away and clambered onto the top of a steel retort.
“Arm yourselves and get ready to fight,” she yelled. “The enemy will soon be back; we’ve got to be ready.”
The Pale did not move. They seemed to be in shock, which was not surprising after all they had seen and done, and in the brief hiatus from fighting many had reverted to their apathetic former selves. They had to be roused again, quickly, otherwise the last resistance would be crushed and Lyf would lawfully order the rest of the Pale put to death.
Tali scrambled up beside Radl. “Do you have loved ones back in the Empound?” she said to the Pale.
They stared at her, sullen, afraid.
“Answer me!”
Nothing.
Radl growled, deep in her throat. Springing lightly down, she stalked to the nearest group of Pale and seized a woman by the throat. After shaking her like a cat with a rat, Radl threw her down, then slammed her fist into the jaw of the next man, rocking him backwards.
“Well?” she said.
“Yes. My family are back in the Empound.”
“Well?” Radl demanded, looking down on the gathered Pale.
“Yes,” shouted the Pale.
“You know what will happen to your families if our rebellion fails.”
They stood there in slack-jawed silence. Clearly, they did not want to think about it.
“We know,” said the woman Radl had shaken by the throat. “Lyf has issued the death warrant. The enemy will slaughter them all.”
“Every Pale in Cython will die,” said Radl. “All your wives and husbands, all your children.”
“Your families can’t help themselves; the Empound has been sealed off,” said Tali. “If you don’t save them, they die. Down the back there are crates of death-lashes, bombasts, grenadoes and fire-flitters —”
Radl thrust her aside. “Arm yourselves and get ready to fight. Hurry – if we can get up the ramp quickly enough, we can take them by surprise.”
Hundreds of Pale stormed down to the back to the weapons shelves. Others gathered heatstones from around the retorts and stills, or wrenched iron bars and other implements off the alchymical equipment, taking anything that could be used as a weapon. Tali returned to Holm, who was leaning against the wall, holding his head.
“Have you seen Tobry?”
“No,” said Holm.
“I have. He’d turned shifter and was going berserker.”
“Then I dare say they’ve cut him down by now,” Holm said quietly. He put a bloody arm around her shoulders.
Tali glanced across to the ramp and her heart missed a beat. Lyf was halfway down it, a host of troops at his back. She pulled free. “They’re coming!”
“Attack!” bellowed Lyf.
Three hundred enemy charged down the ramp. Though they were greatly outnumbered by the Pale, the Cythonians wore chest armour and carried oval shields, and their first charge drove thirty yards across the chymical level before the Pale stopped them, fighting desperately with chuck-lashes and grenadoes, swords and knives, and drove them back to the foot of the ramp.
“Attack from a distance with your grenadoes,” Radl shouted. “Don’t let them get close.”
Enemy reinforcements appeared around the curve of the ramp, another couple of hundred. The company at the bottom assembled in ranks and charged again, and this time the Pale could not drive them all the way back. Their only advantage was in numbers and it was rapidly being neutralised. They were no match for the enemy in size, weaponry, armour or training, and if the Cythonians gained a foothold in the chymical level, the battle and the rebellion were lost.
As Tali ran, she fumbled a couple of grenadoes out of her pack. Her breath was rasping in her throat and her legs were giving out. Thirty yards from the foot of the ramp she propped and hurled the first missile.
“Like this!” she yelled.
It went off at the feet of the enemy, taking down half a dozen of them. She hurled the second grenado but it slipped in her sweaty hand and fell short, exploding and blasting white stone everywhere, and leaving a foot-wide hole in the floor.
The fighting was furious now, the bodies of Cythonians and Pale piled in heaps all around the base of the ramp and scattered across the floor for a hundred feet. There was so much blood that the fighters were slipping in it.
It was Tali’s first close experience of a major battle, and it was horrible. People lay maimed and dying everywhere, screaming in agony, begging for help or to be put down, gasping farewell to loved ones or bitterly regretting that they had joined the failing rebellion. A few were cursing Tali’s name and all her ancestors.
“Attack!” said Lyf, who was hovering twenty feet up, not far from the cube of heatstone blocks.
The enemy re-formed their ranks and charged, driving through the front ranks of the Pale. Tali scrabbled frantically for another grenado, but the fighting was hand-to-hand now and she could not use it without endangering her own people. She hurled it up at Lyf instead. It burst on the wall next to him, showering him in chips of white stone. He zoomed away, bleeding from half a dozen small cuts, and she lost sight of him.
The Pale were being driven back when a vast animal howl rang down the ramp. Suddenly the enemy were screaming and shouting and scrambling out of the way as a seven-foot caitsthe stormed through them, its claws tearing through leather armour into flesh and flinging bodies to left and right.
“Stand firm,” said a burly sergeant. He put himself in the path of the beast and thrust out a javelin.
The caitsthe smashed the shaft to pieces with a contemptuous backhander. Its next blow lifted the sergeant off his feet and drove him into the wall, breaking his neck. As it came raging down the ramp, the rest of the Cythonians scattered. It reached the floor, slipped in blood, then turned towards the nearest group of Pale, who stood there, mesmerised.
The beast – Tali could not think of it as Tobry, for there was no more humanity in its eyes than when he had attacked her after her disastrous attempt to heal him – would tear them apart.
“Emergency potion!” hissed Holm.
Tali felt in her pack for the little bottle. Where had she put it? Her fingers closed on a bundle deep down and she heaved it out, praying that the
bottle hadn’t been broken in all the fighting.
“Hurry!” said Holm, running out and putting himself between the caitsthe and the Pale.
Her injured wrist throbbed. It was a struggle to get the bottle out, and then she could not open it. Holm ducked around the caitsthe and caught it from behind but it whirled and hurled him ten feet across the floor.
The caitsthe bounded after the Pale. Tali leapt between it and them. “Tobry, stop!”
It gave no hint of recognition. Tali could not open the tightly sealed bottle so she flung it into the caitsthe’s gaping mouth. Broken glass could do no lasting harm to a shifter that could heal any injury in minutes.
It crunched up the bottle, the thick grey contents oozing out and mixing with its blood. It grabbed Tali and drew her towards the great maw that could tear her arm off in a single snap. She screamed and tried to pull free but it was many times as strong as she was.
“Stop it!” roared Holm, thumping the caitsthe over the back of the head with a heatstone brick.
It turned slowly, extending its claws, then fell to its knees. The potion was working. Its claws were retreating back into its fingers, the cat jaw slowly changing to a man’s.
Tobry’s eyes looked out of the caitsthe’s yellow eyes. They met hers and recognised her. Tali saw a deep shame in his eyes, and a flush passed up his downy cheeks.
“Thanks,” he said in a thick, growling voice, and fell on his face.
“But for what?” she said quietly.
Holm dragged Tobry away from the arena of battle, which now resumed.
There was a colossal boom behind her. She looked around as the great glass still toppled. It looked as though someone had thrown a grenado at it. Behind it, one of those large flasks of quicksilver had been broken by a projectile and the silvery metal was creeping across the floor. And quicksilver was poisonous to breathe.
“More grenadoes!” she yelled. “Drive them back.”
“It’s not working,” said Holm. “Their reinforcements are still coming down.” He surveyed the battle. “And I can see them at the drive now. We’ve got nowhere to go, and they can attack us from both sides. It’ll all be over in ten minutes… Unless…”
“What?” said Tali.
“The time has come for you to make the final choice about your magery.”
A brick descended into the pit of her stomach. You can be a destroyer or a healer, but not both.
CHAPTER 101
Green acid fumes were whirling all around, condensing on the coils of the still, fizzing on the zinc plates of some arcane apparatus beyond, stinging her cheeks, burning her ears and nose. Tali closed her eyes and held her breath, though that would only gain her one more minute of life.
She fumbled a shirt out of her pack, wiped her face and spat out bloody saliva. All her exposed skin was stinging now.
Thump! She was caught around the waist, heaved effortlessly into the air and carried away, just ahead of the rolling green cloud. The implosion must have strengthened Lyf for he was carrying her weight without effort.
It had given her a painful, temporary power as well, just as it had that time in the sunstone shaft, but not enough to take him on. Lyf shot through roiling fumes towards the side wall, wrenched open a heavy glass door and dropped her onto the floor. He slammed the door and shoved a rubbery seal against it at the base.
They were in a small, square emergency chamber, empty save for a water barrel and a bank of seven levers on the right-hand side. Lyf thrust the levers forward, one by one, and Tali heard sets of water-driven box fans start up outside. He turned and studied her enigmatically.
“You would suffer so agonising a death to save your people?”
“I swore an unbreakable oath,” said Tali. “Why did you save my life?”
“I saved the master pearl. Your life was incidental.”
“Are you going to cut it out now?”
“After I’ve checked on my people. If the sunstone knocked them unconscious —”
“If you want to save them, you’d better hurry,” she said exhaustedly.
Her eyes were burning again. She felt her way across to the water barrel and ducked her head. When she cleaned her eyes, Lyf was gone.
Tali checked the door. It was locked. She reached out with her gift, to see if she could unlock it, but it did not budge.
She dressed hastily, knowing Lyf could come back at any moment, then hurled her loincloth, the symbol of her enslavement, into the darkest corner. Even if she only had minutes to live she wasn’t wearing it any longer.
Since she could not get out, she began to check the tunnels with the mage glass, one by one. Lyf was flitting back and forth, rousing his people. The bursting sunstone had knocked most of the enemy unconscious, but there was still fighting here and there. She had saved the Pale from immediate destruction, but for how long?
Tobry should have stood out among both the Pale and the grey-skinned enemy, but she saw no sign of him, or Holm. She closed her eyes, remembering Tobry as she had last seen him through the mage glass, rampaging up and down the tunnels, gone berserker in his madness. Tears leaked from her eyes. How had such a wonderful man been reduced to this.
Could he be healed with magery? Both Holm and Tobry had said no, but no one really knew. If it was possible at all, the best chance must be here in Cython, close to the greatest source of healing power of all – the heatstone mine. But to attempt it she would have to make the irrevocable choice between healing and destruction, and if she chose healing she could never use destructive magery to help the Pale.
Alkoyl ate through the lock, silently. The door opened, closed again, then Wil’s callused fingers closed around Tali’s throat from behind.
“All Wil’s fault,” he slurred. “Should have betrayed you to Matriarch Ady when she asked.”
Tali fought her instinctive urge to struggle – he was too strong.
His fingers opened and closed, opened and closed, squeezing her throat so hard that her windpipe was flattening. He was playing with her life, drawing out the delicious moments before he took it. Tali waited until he was directly behind her then slammed her head backwards into his ruined nose, caving it in.
Wil screamed. She slammed her head back again and again, until his hands relaxed. He was lurching around, blinded by tears of agony. His face and hands were red from the acid fumes he had walked through to get to her and blood was flooding from his nose. She shouldered him aside, stumbled for the door, and out.
Most of the green mist had cleared, though the air still stung her nose and made her eyes water. She pounded across to the walled-off drive. Blood was still dribbling from the cracks, low down, and she could hear a few desultory hammer blows on it, but it was clear the Pale weren’t going to break through without assistance.
Tali ran down to the back of the chamber, to the racks and crates she had seen earlier. Her lungs were burning now, her eyes watering so badly that she could barely see. She stuffed half a dozen grenadoes into her pack, strapped on a belt of death-lashes and plodded back to the wall.
“Stand back!” she yelled through the biggest crack.
The hammering stopped. Tali hurled the first of her grenadoes at the centre of the wall, where it was cracked from Holm’s earlier blast. Boom! The centre of the wall crazed. She hurled the second grenado at the base, a third of the wall fell away and she saw the desperate Pale on the other side. They kicked and smashed the broken stone out of the way and burst through, slipping and skidding on the bloody drive.
What a pitiful remnant they were. Tali peered through, trying to count the ones up the drive. They numbered twelve hundred at most, less than half of those who had followed her out of the Empound only hours ago. Many were injured and all looked exhausted. The rebellion could not last much longer.
Radl was at their head, wounded in many places and trembling with weariness, but the light had not gone out in her eyes. And, to Tali’s joy, Holm was beside her.
“This way,” said Tali.
“There are grenadoes and all kinds of other weapons down the back, in those crates.” She pointed. “Hurry! There’s a ramp on the other side – they may come that way.”
“Did you do that?” said Radl.
“What?”
“Knock down three thousand of the enemy.”
“I broke a great sunstone,” said Tali. “Nearly killed me.”
“You saved us. Without that reprieve, they would have slaughtered us all.”
To Tali’s astonishment, Radl, her enemy since childhood, threw her arms around her. After a few seconds she broke away and clambered onto the top of a steel retort.
“Arm yourselves and get ready to fight,” she yelled. “The enemy will soon be back; we’ve got to be ready.”
The Pale did not move. They seemed to be in shock, which was not surprising after all they had seen and done, and in the brief hiatus from fighting many had reverted to their apathetic former selves. They had to be roused again, quickly, otherwise the last resistance would be crushed and Lyf would lawfully order the rest of the Pale put to death.
Tali scrambled up beside Radl. “Do you have loved ones back in the Empound?” she said to the Pale.
They stared at her, sullen, afraid.
“Answer me!”
Nothing.
Radl growled, deep in her throat. Springing lightly down, she stalked to the nearest group of Pale and seized a woman by the throat. After shaking her like a cat with a rat, Radl threw her down, then slammed her fist into the jaw of the next man, rocking him backwards.
“Well?” she said.
“Yes. My family are back in the Empound.”
“Well?” Radl demanded, looking down on the gathered Pale.
“Yes,” shouted the Pale.
“You know what will happen to your families if our rebellion fails.”
They stood there in slack-jawed silence. Clearly, they did not want to think about it.
“We know,” said the woman Radl had shaken by the throat. “Lyf has issued the death warrant. The enemy will slaughter them all.”
