by Ian Irvine
“But if you wanted it more than anything, you wouldn’t be here now,” Wilm said perceptively.
Llian did not feel the need to talk about it. Clearly, Wilm did. Llian felt that the lad was on the verge of discovering who he really was.
“And you?” Llian prompted.
“I want to stand up for what I believe in,” said Wilm. “And fight for what is right.”
Llian took an exploratory sip. The Driftmere exceeded his lofty expectations. He almost purred. “Will you continue with your sword practice?”
“The moment I can afford it I’m going to have lessons. I’ve got to do it properly.” He flushed in the firelight. “Sorry! I didn’t mean…”
Chroniclers weren’t easily offended. “I just wrote down the basic strokes as I remembered them. I’ve no idea if they’re any good.” Llian took another sip and sighed. “We’d better turn in.”
He was settling down by the fire when Thandiwe’s words resurfaced. “About your sword…” said Llian.
“I still can’t think of it as mine,” Wilm said dreamily. “What about it?”
“Mendark was a truly great mancer, and a mancer’s weapon could well be enchanted. I thought you should know.”
“It might give me an edge,” said Wilm, and laughed.
“You’re quite the witty young blade,” said Llian, and went to sleep.
68
STRONGER, FOULER, CLOSER
“Light, I need light!” gasped Aviel.
He was coming for her; he was desperate to stop her from reaching the summon stone, the source of his power.
She pounded half a dozen of the tarred boards until they split, bound the pieces into a bundle and set the end alight. The black wood blazed three feet high, making wraith shapes dance and whirl on the stone walls of the mill.
She had to get out, now. She jerked her boots on so violently that she wrenched her ankle and the pain brought tears to her eyes; today was going to be a very bad day. Aviel hobbled out to Thistle. He must have been woken by her scream, for his eyes were wide and fearful. He whinnied and tossed his head and kicked out.
“Good boy,” she said, stroking his muzzle. “Practise that kick; we’re going to need it.”
She led him to a block of stone and used it to mount, holding her blazing bundle high. Thistle kept moving; he didn’t like the flames. She directed him back to the track and turned his head downhill.
“Down,” she said.
The brand burned down to a stub. She tossed it into a stream and black night enveloped her. She laid a hand on Thistle’s warm neck.
“You’ll smell him a mile off. You’ll warn me, won’t you?”
The night was overcast and she could not see a single star. Aviel had no way of telling what time it was, though she still felt dull-headed; perhaps she had not slept long at all.
How far away was he? She thought he had been in a high place, looking down, though every ridge around here was a high place. He could have been five minutes away, or five hours.
The forest was full of small noises – the steady thump, thump of a bounding animal, a swooping flap that might have been an owl or even a bat, the rustle of small branches rubbing in the treetops. A tiny cry cut short, perhaps the owl taking a rat.
Those sounds had nothing to do with him. He would not come quietly through the black night; he would rampage through the forest, smashing down everything in his path.
She would have plenty of warning, though Aviel did not see how it would help her. Since she had to sleep, and evidently he did not, sooner or later he must catch her, and she had no way of defending herself against such a man. Her only hope was to outrun him, but first she had to know where to run to.
She had to use the Eureka Graveolence again.
Aviel did not want to. Her first experience had been most unpleasant, and the grimoire said the effects of the Great Potions were liable to be more dangerous each time they were used. But she had no choice.
She removed the cloth-wrapped phial from the last of her belt loops and checked it with her fingers. A thread was tied around it; it was the right potion. She took the stopper out, dampened the cloth with the potion and put the phial away. She could not risk losing it if something went wrong.
Very gingerly, she sniffed the cloth.
Thud-thud. It was as if Thistle had kicked her in the belly. The pain was so agonising that she doubled over, howling and gasping. The dark forest lit up, the tree trunks glowing a luminous white and bending down to trap her in a cage of live branches.
They toppled as if a thousand trees had been mown down by a single blow from a scythe. Lightning split the sky in two, the halves opened, and she saw that ugly ruined tower again, a long way off to her left. It had to be the place.
Minutes passed before Aviel was capable of sitting upright. Her belly was aching, and the muscle she had torn the previous night caused shards of pain with every movement. The darkness closed in, though she saw that the overcast was clearing away from the west, the stars coming out. She fixed on the direction where she had seen the tower and looked for a star she could use as a pointer.
If she took the angle between the red Scorpion Nebula and the yellow Triplets it would always point north, and the broken tower had been almost due north from here. It was enough to go on. When she came close the tower should be easy to spot – it was on the peak of a horn of bare rock.
She rode through the night, using the nebula and the Triplets to maintain her heading, and after a while Thistle got the message. Aviel dozed in the saddle, and whenever she roused he was heading in the right direction.
The sun rose. She emerged from forest onto a grassy plateau, a narrow strip of sloping land bounded on her left by rugged hills rising to high mountains, and on the right by a cliff hundreds of feet high. The plateau ran north, sometimes widening to five or six miles, sometimes pinching down to a rind only a few hundred yards across. It made it easy to navigate. As long as she kept to the plateau she would be heading roughly in the right direction.
It also made it easy for her hunter to follow.
In the mid-morning Aviel had to stop for a toilet break and a brief sleep. There was no sign of anyone behind her so she dismounted in the most open area she could find. She lay down in her sleeping pouch, closed her eyes and was drifting into a desperately needed sleep when she caught her hunter’s putrid odour: stronger, fouler, closer.
Get away while you can!
She scrabbled out of the sleeping pouch, blind with panic. Abandoning her pot and pan, her knife and spoon and even the sleeping pouch, she half ran, half hopped towards Thistle, hauled herself into the saddle and snatched at the reins.
“Go, Thistle!” she screamed. “Run as though the greatest demon of the underworld is after us.”
Thistle took her at her word and bolted north along the plateau, far faster than Aviel had ever gone before. She hunched down, hooked her cold fingers under the saddle and tried to stay on as he leaped rivulets and cascades, swerved around boulders that had rolled down from the rearing mountains on her left, and tore through patches of scented shrubbery.
Finally he slowed to a canter, trotting through a forest and past a still black lake with a half-ruined pavilion, then up to the foot of a steep, bare ridge that no horse could have climbed.
Thistle stopped. His great chest was heaving and his flanks were covered in overlapping trails of foam. He looked her in the eye as if to say, I dare go no further.
She stroked his muzzle. “Thank you, Thistle.”
Aviel dismounted stiffly, took her pack out of one saddlebag and put it on. It contained food and water, the hammer and flask of oil and the deadly grimoire. It was a cold day and would be a colder night. Why had she abandoned her sleeping pouch? Even if her enemy was riding, he must be hours behind.
She hugged Thistle around the neck. “You deserve a rest and the sweetest grass on the plateau. But keep a sharp lookout.”
She limped onto the ridge and began the climb. It was very steep and
at first she had to go up on her hands and knees because she wasn’t able to stand up. But she knew where to go now, for she had fleetingly glimpsed the broken tower on the headlong ride.
She could not see it from here but knew she had a climb of many hours. If she could locate the stone, smash it to bits and burn it, she might stop the invasion. With any luck that would hurt her hunter too… No, what was she thinking? The only luck she ever had was bad.
Up she went, ever up. The path turned into a sinuous track along the top of the ridge. It was only a few feet wide and there was a deadly fall of hundreds of feet to either side into gorges choked with boulders.
The way steepened again. Steps had been cut into the top of the ridge here, though they were broken, icy and littered with frost-shattered rock. Aviel’s bad ankle was so swollen that she could not stand upright and she had gone back to hands and knees. She dragged herself up the abrasive rock with bleeding fingers, but she was not going fast enough.
She kept detecting him – ever stronger, ever fouler, ever closer. He was far stronger than her and utterly obsessed. She had to rest every hundred yards now but knew he did not stop at all.
Suddenly, after a climb of about eight hours, she smelled him again and almost fell off the ridge. How could he be here already? She had to be imagining it. But she looked down and there he was, huge, red-faced, driving up at a reckless speed. He was where she had been an hour ago, though at the pace he was going he would be here in twenty minutes. Could she reach the tower in that time? At her current rate it would take her another hour.
Aviel tried to climb faster, but her strength was fading and the heart had gone out of her. What was the point in enduring all this agony when she had no hope left?
69
IT NEEDS FEEDING
He was less than four hundred yards behind her and closing fast. Aviel looked for a rock to attack him with, but the ridge was so steep that every loose rock had fallen away.
She struggled up, leaving bloody fingermarks on the stone. Now he was only a hundred yards below her, gulping noisily from a flagon. He drained it and hurled it back over his head to smash on the steps far below.
He carried a pair of little barrels in a frame on his back, and he was now close enough for Aviel to recognise them as Shand’s. They contained the raw spirit he used to fortify his sweet wines, and make his fruit liqueurs.
Had she been an apprentice mancer with command of a basic fire spell she might have turned her hunter and his barrels into a living torch that would have been visible in Tolryme town, ten miles away. How she would have watched him burn! The thought shocked her. How had her life been reduced to a single urge – kill or be killed?
Twenty yards behind now. Time for desperate measures. She took the Eureka Graveolence from her belt and removed the stopper, praying that it would hurt him as much as it hurt her. She would throw it in his face, hoping the concentrated potion would make him convulse and fall to his death. She could not be sure of hitting him from a distance; she would have to wait until the last second and pray that the potion worked quickly. If it did not, he would kill her.
He looked up and for the first time she saw his face clearly. His head was enormous, bloated and purple, his face covered in dozens of scars, some infected and oozing. His nose was a scarlet segment of cauliflower, his teeth were broken and his jaw was lopsided. But his eyes were the most horrible sight she had ever seen. The eye sockets were raw red holes, as if his eyeballs had shrunk. His eyes flicked back and forth as he tried to focus, and mucus oozed down his cheeks.
Aviel gasped and her elbow struck the rock so hard that a drop of the potion splashed across her hand. She tried to wipe it off with her other sleeve but spilled another drop on her trousers. She jammed the phial back into her belt, caught a whiff of the scent potion and threw up so violently that she sprayed the rock for yards ahead.
Pain speared through the torn muscle in her belly. Her stomach churned violently, sickeningly; her head felt hot, then icy cold. The muscles in her hand began to twitch uncontrollably, then in the leg where she had spilled the potion, and the twitching spread up and down until the only parts of her body not trembling were her head and her left arm.
Now he was ten yards below. He bared his broken teeth.
“W-w-who are y-you?” she whispered. Even her tongue was twitching now.
“Gurgito Unick, at your service.”
Now he was five yards down. Those awful eyes darted back and forth.
“W-w-w-w-why?” Aviel could not get anything else out.
Two yards down. He smelled as if he were rotting inside, and rolling shivers and shudders were passing through him from one end to the other. Why was he so determined to kill her? Was it to protect the summon stone, the precious bane whose drumming had made him what he was, yet was eating him alive?
Aviel had to try again or die. With her left hand, which had now begun to twitch, she slipped out the bung of the Eureka Graveolence phial. As he bent over her his eyes slipped out of focus and she flicked the phial, spattering drops of the scent potion across his upper lip.
The drumming sounded thunderously, shaking the ground and flaking off chips of rock, which went skidding down the sides of the ridge. Unick’s eyes opened so wide that his shrunken eyeballs protruded, then he reeled back, throwing up his arms. The weight of the barrels on his back overbalanced him and he crashed down the broken steps, landing so hard that Aviel felt sure he would have caved the back of his head in.
But she could not take advantage of his fall. Her twitching muscles were totally uncoordinated. After a minute he rolled over, almost toppling over the edge, but his luck was as good as hers was bad and another thrash took him back to the centre of a step. He sat up, staring at her blearily. Blood was streaming down the side of his head.
“What… did… you… do?” He had to force each word out.
“S-s-scent potion. I used it to f-find the summon stone.”
“Why?”
She told him about the Merdrun and their plans. Unick rubbed his head, then stared at the bloody smears on his hand. He was trembling worse than before. He wiped his hand on the seat of his pants and stood up, staring towards where the ruined tower stood. The drumming was fading.
“They’ll never get past me,” said Unick. “All the power of the summon stone will be mine.”
“Malien said never use near mancery near it. It’s got to be destroyed.” She should not have told him; he would kill her for certain now.
“And you think you can do that?” he sneered.
She did not reply. She could not speak.
“The source,” he whispered. “Oh, let it be up there.”
“W-w-what’s the matter?”
“Lost the source… after I used my devices. It’s tearing me apart.”
“What d-devices?”
He partly withdrew one from his pack – a long thin brass tube with a cluster of needle-like blue crystals in one end – then shoved it back. “Origin.”
The next, a thicker, shorter brass tube with paired red crystals at the end, was Identity. She had visualised it the first time she had been connected to him; he had used it to locate her. The final device, a stubby brass tube the size of a large beer tankard, with a single dark crystal on the end, was Command.
“What are they for?” Her tongue wasn’t twitching so badly now.
“Greater mancery than has ever been imagined. Get up!”
“C-can’t move.”
The tiny eyes flicked back and forth, focused on her again. “Why not?”
“Spilled the scent potion on myself.”
“Pathetic little fool! No one can teach themself mancery.”
If he thought she was no threat at all, it might give her a chance.
He rose, picked her up, swayed towards the edge on the left and recovered only to sway even more dangerously towards the right. The hairs stood up on the back of her neck.
“Where are you taking me?”
He
rubbed his eyes and worked his thick neck back and forth, struggling to focus. He was half blind close up.
“The stone needs feeding.”
The twitching faded and she felt a splintery pain in her ankle. She cried out.
Holding her with one arm, he yanked up the leg of her trousers and stared at her swollen ankle. “Disgusting twist-foot! Should have been put down at birth.”
Aviel felt the heat moving up her throat to her face. “I didn’t ask to be born like this. But you’re a monster – and you’ve created yourself.”
He thumped her in the ribs. “You know nothing about me.”
“What did you mean, it needs feeding?”
“The drumming is also a call. The stone wants power, but first it has to feed.”
He staggered up the broken steps, lurching from side to side. Most people would have climbed on hands and knees but he seemed to have no fear. She had enough for both of them.
Finally she saw their destination ahead. The ruined, nine-sided tower, perched on the highest, steepest, most windswept and barren ridge in all Bannador. It loomed above them, unreal, deformed, the product of one man’s insane obsession.
The ridge and tower wavered before her eyes and grew solid again. She knew where she was now. This was Carcharon, a terrible place where in ages past profane experiments had been carried out by reckless men, with tragic consequences.
Was that why the summon stone was hidden here? Had it been attracted to this evil place? Or was Carcharon evil because the stone was here?
She could sense something else now. A strangeness in the air and a warping of the ground, as if the great mancery done here in ages past had corrupted even the rock from which the ridge was made. Her stomach roiled and churned.
Unick stopped suddenly, gasping for breath. His breath reeked of spirits; she was half-drunk on his foul second-hand air. Feeling was coming back to her lower limbs, though. Was there anything she could do to save herself?
Do not use mancery near it, Malien had written. Under no circumstances attempt to draw upon the power of the source – this could be catastrophic.
