by Ian Irvine
“Tallia was going to propose us to be Magister jointly. Why can’t I be told?”
“She said this secret could not be shared.”
“She’s trying to drive a wedge between us,” Esea said shrilly.
“She’s just doing what the Magister must.”
“After we risked our lives to save her!”
Hingis reined in, the agitation rising and sending his withered lung into spasms. It always started this way, and it was liable to finish with him on his back, feeling as though he was slowly suffocating. One of his recurring nightmares.
“Esea, please don’t.”
Raindrops peppered his face. He threw his shoulders back, trying to expand his chest, but the breath thickened in his throat, his sight blurred and his head spun. He swayed and clutched desperately at the saddle horn.
In a moment she was beside him, steadying him. “Sorry. I’m a mean-faced bitch. If it wasn’t for me—”
Her reiterations of guilt and self-blame were almost unbearable. “Let’s focus on getting to Sith.”
“Of course,” Esea said in an overly bright voice. She looked back the way they had come and swore. “They’re after us!”
Hingis turned too quickly, vertigo overcame him and he would have fallen had she not caught his arm. He tried to focus and could not, though one thing was clear. They were in deep trouble, and in his condition they could not hope to outrun it.
“How many?”
“About ten.”
Esea could not hold off ten by herself. Outdoors, her mancery was far less effective.
He clutched her wrist. “I’m sorry. I do care for you.”
“I’ve never doubted it,” she said harshly.
She pulled away and for a terrible second he thought she was going to leave. Reality intervened. Esea would give her life to protect him and he would do the same for her.
“We’ll head up the hill,” she said. “Can you ride by yourself?”
“Don’t get too far ahead; I can’t see far. What’s at the top?”
“No idea.”
The horses clattered up the corrugated track, Hingis lurching from side to side. It was all he could do to stay on. His ribs began to ache, then the bones of his ruined face. He forced the pain into the background; he had half a lifetime’s experience in that discipline.
He began to prepare a defensive illusion. A mancer’s power could either be drawn from himself, which was exhausting, or from a previously enchanted object, if he had one. Hingis’s power came from his own meagre body, and the process of drawing it was long and painful.
He looked up and Esea was gone. He choked. Curse being so useless, so helpless!
“Esea!” he gasped. His vision was closing in; he could not see beyond his horse’s head now.
“I’m right here,” she said from a few yards away. “Come on, you can make it.”
Make it to what?
The horses scrambled up a steep slope and then the ground was level beneath him; they were at the top. The gritty soil was littered with broken stone and the grass was scant, grey, tussocky. The hilltop had a mineral smell he could not place, a poisonous smell.
“What’s it like, Esea? Any place we can defend?”
“Some broken walls a hundred yards ahead, barely high enough to hide behind, and what’s left of a couple of chimney stacks.”
“From a house?”
“Furnaces, I’d say. There are mining pits on the right – worked out long ago. And mullock heaps and piles of slag.”
“What were they mining?”
“Lead ore, by the look of it, and smelting the lead out. Careful, there could be covered shafts.”
He heard her dismount. She took the reins and led his horse forward.
“Between the chimneys and the wall is our best hope. It’ll give the horses some protection.”
The panic faded a little and Hingis’s focus improved. The chimney stacks were about twenty feet high and eight feet across at the base. The closer one had a distinct lean to the right and a large crack halfway up, shaped like the profile of a hook-nosed man. There was little mortar between the stones – a crude job, only meant to last as long as the small ore deposits could be worked.
“Have we got a chance?” he said.
Her breast heaved and she said in a high voice, “There’s a way down on the far side. If you go now—”
“No!”
“Tallia gave you a special job. If I delay them—”
“No.”
“If we stay, we’ll both die.”
His eyes moistened. “You’ve always been beside me. If you’re going to die, I’ll die with you.”
She stamped her foot. “Then you’re a stupid bloody fool!”
“One of many personality defects,” he said with a lopsided grin. “Help me down.”
She reached up. He dismounted with the grace of a buffalo descending a ladder, almost bringing her down as well.
“How are we going to do this?”
“Start with your illusions. I’m at a disadvantage here.”
Buildings were easily taken apart if you knew where to apply force, then gravity did the rest, but breaking or moving rocks was hard work for a reshaper.
The wind was stronger up here, and colder. Hingis’s teeth chattered. He suffered from the cold at the best of times, there being little meat on his twisted bones, and it was worse in times of stress.
“I’ll get your coat,” she said, reaching up to his saddlebags.
“No, I need to be able to move freely.”
That was a laugh, given that he had the dexterity of a warthog. He inspected the ruins and his spirits sank further. Two people could not hope to defend them against ten, for the enemy could attack from three directions at once, and there was enough cover on the hilltop for them to get within thirty yards unseen.
He studied the area more closely. The walls formed a series of small enclosures but, being only a few feet high, were little use for defence; a running man could leap them. They were higher on the north side, though not high enough. A series of low slag heaps, the poisonous soil bare of vegetation, occupied the northern and western edges of the hill. The enemy would be exposed if they came that way. Beyond, the land dropped sharply.
On the eastern and south-eastern sides he made out five irregularly shaped pits, some partly filled with water, surrounded by scrubby vegetation. There could be other pits or shafts, unseen. Further on the mullock heaps – piles of broken rock – ran in tongue-like landslides over the edge of the hill.
Esea led the horses in between the two chimneys, where they would be protected from arrows. “No point making it easy for them. I’ll stay here. Go up there.”
She pointed to the far end of the low walls, where an angle, higher than the rest, would cover him from two sides. She never stopped trying to look after him.
“I’ll work on an illusion,” said Hingis.
He lurched along between the broken walls. At the end he clambered up onto the highest section and teetered there, scanning the hilltop and planning his deception. Esea was watching him anxiously, afraid he would fall. He suppressed his irritation.
She cocked her head, listening. “They’re coming up the hill.”
The wind whined between the broken chimneys. Raindrops spattered his face and neck, and his feet were freezing. Get on with it! He had to form his illusion before they saw the reality.
First, blur the hilltop so they wouldn’t see the dangers. The weather helped; it wasn’t difficult for a master illusionist to turn the showers into patches of mist. It was harder to make it cling to the pits to hide them, though, and Hingis was breathing raggedly by the time he had done it.
He copied the pit outlines and moved them south so they lay across the enemy’s most direct path, hoping to divert them towards the hidden pits. But large-scale illusions were difficult at the best of times; they would not fool the enemy long.
Esea was pacing back and forth next to the chimneys, movi
ng her hands in the air. Hingis could not tell what she was trying to do; perhaps she did not know herself. She was as intuitive as he was logical, and often a reshaping only took form in the last desperate seconds.
He was creating wall illusions when their pursuers appeared at the top of the track. Nine soldiers, led by the gaunt mancer, Scorbic Vyl. He was unmasked and his head was bandaged.
Vyl’s bony head turned this way and that, studying the hilltop, then he raised a snake-shaped staff. A thunder crack echoed back and forth, and when the echoes died Hingis’s pit illusions were gone.
He felt that suffocating breathlessness again but fought it; he could not afford any weakness now. He crouched down and continued working on his wall illusions, afraid they would disappear too, but they remained. Perhaps Vyl’s spell could only disperse what he could identify as illusion.
Vyl’s cry rang out. “There they are! You two, take the monstrosity, alive. The rest of you, hold the blonde bitch for me!”
Hingis’s heart missed three beats in a row and he lost his vision for a couple of seconds. When it returned the soldiers were racing towards the ruins, seven of them heading for Esea, the other two and Vyl coming his way. Pain seared through Hingis’s jaw. What would Vyl do to his beautiful, tragic sister?
He lurched back towards her, vision blurred, breath ragged.
Esea raised her hands and pointed at the leading soldier. His pants fell down and he tripped and landed hard, the broadsword jarring out of his grasp. The next two men swerved round him.
She pointed at the first of them. He stumbled and landed prone – his boots had come to pieces. The man behind him yelped, dropped his sword, which had turned red-hot, and shook his smoking fingers. He snatched up the broadsword of the first man to have fallen and ran on.
The mancer let out a harsh cry and pointed his serpent staff at Esea. She screamed and doubled over.
“Take her!” bellowed Vyl.
Esea forced herself upright, her face twisted in agony. There was blood on her mouth and chin. She extended her hands towards the closest soldiers but nothing happened. Fear exploded in Hingis’s chest as they ran at her, unhindered.
“Come out!” said Vyl.
Hingis had no choice. He limped out from behind his walls and the two soldiers took hold of him.
“Bring her here,” said Vyl. “Hold tight to the monstrosity. He needs to see.”
They dragged Esea across, then Vyl prodded Hingis in the chest with his staff. “You’ve got a secret, and I want it.”
Hingis shook his head. He was too afraid to speak.
Vyl gestured to a bow-legged fellow with black fur coating his arms and the backs of his hands. “This man was hiding outside Thurkad when Tallia gave you the code to the council’s spell vault.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Hingis.
“Cut off his sister’s littlest left toe,” said Vyl.
13
THE SHADOW SNAKE
“No!” shrieked Hingis.
“Speak then,” said Vyl.
But Hingis could not betray Tallia either. While the two soldiers held Esea, the hairy man removed her boots and socks. Her small feet were as perfectly formed as the rest of her. The drumming grew louder and Hingis felt a shocking pain in the middle of his chest.
“Well?” said Vyl.
“Keep your mouth shut, Hingis,” said Esea.
Vyl gestured to the hairy man. “Do it.”
He put the point of his sword on her little toe and glanced at Hingis. Hingis wanted to scream out the code. How could any secret, even the spell vault, matter as much as his sister? But he had sworn to protect the code; he did not speak.
The hairy man thrust. Esea screwed up her face but did not make a sound. He bent and held up her severed toe. Hingis wanted to tear the sky down on the man, and Vyl, and most of all himself.
“The code,” said Vyl, “or it’s another toe. I’ll turn her into a monstrosity like you, if I have to.”
“You wouldn’t tell me,” Esea hissed at Hingis. “Don’t you dare tell him.”
“I… can’t… bear it,” Hingis whispered.
“I’ll gladly sacrifice a few toes to protect the secret – and your honour.”
She meant it, and it proved that, despite her flaws, she was more honourable than he was. Her beauty was the only foil Hingis had to his own hideousness, and if she were mutilated protecting him, he would be doubly marred.
Vyl nodded to the hairy soldier, who removed her next toe and displayed it like a trophy. Esea tried to stifle a cry but could not. The drumming grew louder.
Hingis looked down at her bloody, maimed foot and knew Vyl would not stop with her toes. He would do exactly as he had threatened, and Hingis could not endure it.
“Well?” said Vyl.
“Shut up!” snapped Esea, her face twisted in pain.
Vyl gestured to the soldiers to move away from Hingis and approached. “The code,” he said. “Whisper it to me.”
The drumming pounded in Hingis’s ears and the pain was more than he could bear. He whispered the words and numbers he had sworn to protect with his life. And he would have, but he could not protect it at the price of Esea’s mutilation, or her life.
“You bastard!” she raged, raising her left foot. “Does my sacrifice mean nothing to you?”
“Kill her slowly,” said Vyl, grounding his staff. “He can watch.”
The soldiers were still yards away from Hingis and he saw a tiny chance. Acting on rarely used intuition, he drew more power than he had ever drawn before and cast a despairing illusion. But not at Vyl, at his serpent-shaped staff.
Vyl let out a shriek of terror as the staff became a gigantic snake, the most perfect and devastating illusion Hingis had ever created. The snake twisted in Vyl’s hand, opened a bucket-sized mouth and went for his head. He knew it was illusion but, in that moment of terror, intellect could not override instinct.
Esea spoke a reshaping command and metal shattered to Hingis’s left, embedding shards of one soldier’s sword in the throat of another and the eye of a third. She bolted, hobbling on her left foot.
The snake’s mouth closed around Vyl’s skull, the finger-length fangs sinking through bone with an audible crunch. He screamed so loudly that the remaining soldiers froze, their weapons out.
Hingis rode the illusion with all he had, knowing it would not last; maintaining it was sucking the strength out of him. Then something rose like a misty sickness from the ground – no, from some source underground. A black miasma, born from poisons leaching from the slag piles and given life by the mancery used here.
It had a kind of power and he took it. Hingis gestured towards the screaming mancer and the snake shook him by the head. It levered its fangs out, widened its jaws and enveloped Vyl’s head as if to swallow him whole. His scream was cut off; he thrashed on the ground and the snake’s smaller sets of teeth moved back and forth, dragging him in until his neck and left arm were enveloped as well. His legs kicked uselessly and his free arm flailed.
The hairy soldier let out a war cry and ran to the mancer’s aid. Vyl was grunting like a half-strangled pig, and brown muck, mixed with blood, was foaming out of the snake’s mouth. The soldier stopped, gaping. The illusion faded a little. Hingis forced it back to reality. The soldier let out a roar, ran on and took a wild hack at the snake.
There was a sickening crunch and blood fountained from its mouth, then abruptly the illusion vanished. The snake staff fell to the ground and so did Vyl, blood pouring from his upper arm, which was almost completely severed.
The hairy soldier’s mouth fell open and the tip of his sword thudded into the ground. Hingis lurched back behind the broken walls.
Vyl was moaning. “You – imbecile!” He groped for his staff with his good hand and sent a blast at the hairy soldier that hurled him backwards for twenty feet, as dead as the stones all around him.
“Kill the blonde and take the monstrosity,” Vyl gasped. The sta
ff fell from his hand. He clamped his fingers around his upper arm, vainly trying to staunch the bleeding. “Help… me.”
Two soldiers ran to him. Another two went after Esea and the remaining two came for Hingis. The miasma coiled around his throat as if to choke him. He staggered and fell to his knees, his guts churning. Aftersickness had always been his bane, though this was unlike anything he had suffered before. There was something toxic about this place.
His hunters were approaching the outer walls. Hingis checked on his wall illusions. One was fading but the first one he’d created, when he was stronger, still held. He shifted the illusion fractionally and blurred the real wall.
Esea let out a shriek, but he could not see her and could do nothing for her. The leading soldier, a huge red-faced fellow, grinned and sprang over the illusion wall towards Hingis.
Crack! The soldier’s groin came down on the broken top of the real wall with all his weight on it, jarring the sword out of his hand. The impact must have been agonising but he stifled a cry, rolled forward onto the rubble and crawled for the sword.
Hingis heaved a heavy piece of stone off the wall and dropped it on the flat of the blade, which snapped halfway along. But it was still a deadly weapon. The soldier rose, swinging the stub at Hingis’s face. He swayed sideways. The soldier swivelled to attack; there came a second crack and he groaned and fell, his hip broken.
The other soldier, not trusting anything he saw, was probing ahead with the tip of his blade. He would soon discover what was real and what was not.
Hingis lurched down between the walls, looking for Esea, but there was no sign of her. Vyl lay on the stony ground twenty feet away, covered in blood and as white as an egg. Someone had removed his arm; it was a couple of yards off. A scar-faced soldier held the stump while a small wiry fellow tightened a bloody tourniquet with a piece of stick. The stump was still dripping blood; Hingis prayed that Vyl did not have much left in him.
The toxic aftersickness was getting worse; Hingis could not last much longer. The other soldier was clambering over the wall, five or six yards away. Hingis dug deep for the strength to cast another illusion but did not find it. He was spent.
