by Ian Irvine
Not so absurd, come to think of it. Fyllis had got him out, relatively unharmed. And Maelys had overcome every obstacle, including ones Nish couldn’t have defeated. It was all the more incomprehensible that such a resourceful and level-headed girl (thinking of her as a girl made things so much easier) should have acted so rashly. What was she really after?
Yet … when he thought about it, Maelys was so quiet and shy that it was inconceivable she could be working on her own behalf. She must be acting out of duty to her clan. Her ancient clan had nothing left to lose but their lives, and such proud folk might account their lives of little worth when reduced to such a mean existence. But they had everything to gain if Nish did overthrow his father.
It all became clear. The aunts were prepared to risk everything on this reckless gamble, knowing that if they lost they’d suffer the cruellest fate the God-Emperor could contrive for them.
Ah, but if they won … Just for a moment, Nish allowed himself the glorious dream – that he might take his father’s place and dispense justice tempered by mercy with an even hand, revered by all his subjects as he worked to change Santhenar to a better, fairer place.
And he would reward Maelys’s clan beyond their imagination, for Nish never forgot his friends. He followed that delicious dream as he stumbled through the dark, until he put his foot down and there was nothing underneath it.
His heart lurched and he threw himself backwards, just in time. When he’d recovered, Nish felt around in front of him, thinking that he’d come to the edge of a cliff, but it was just a ledge about a span high.
Still, he might have broken an ankle. He sat on the edge and hard reality pushed his daydreams away. Well he might admire the aunts’ gamble, but there was no place in his mind for dreams and no room in his heart for hope. He’d cut himself off from its miseries and hope’s treacherous cousin, expectation. He would look for nothing more than the life of an ordinary man, would expect nothing save to live from one day to the next. If he expected nothing, he wouldn’t be let down again.
His thoughts returned to Maelys, and how he’d struck out at her. To his shame, Nish discovered that he’d enjoyed taking out his bitterness on her; hurting her had helped to ease his pain. He saw the stricken look in her eyes and felt sick. Prison had changed, no, lessened him. He’d spent so long immersed in his own troubles that he’d lost all feeling for others.
Maelys, at least, had acted selflessly, out of duty to her family. Yes, she had tried to manipulate him, in her awkward, girlish way, and it had turned out disastrously for the villagers, yet their elders had made the choice to blind and kill him, when they could have held him for the God-Emperor’s minions. They’d brought it on themselves.
And he had to learn to look outside himself. He was deeply in Maelys’s debt. He owed her his life and the chance to live again. He had to make it up to her.
Apologising wasn’t going to be easy and Nish didn’t want to do it, for he was a proud man who found it hard to admit his failings. Never admit a weakness. That had been another of his father’s harsh childhood lessons. Why me? he kept thinking as he headed back, and had to remind himself again – so soon – to get out of his self-absorption. He rehearsed various forms of apology as he stumbled through the dark, but finally decided on the simplest, ‘I’m really sorry’.
Approaching the camp site, he hesitated outside the circle of firelight. Rurr-shyve was still sleeping, assuming that what it did at such times was sleep. Who could tell? Surely only his father could see into the mind of the alien beasts.
Maelys was sitting well back from the fire, in the shadow cast by the discs of Rurr-shyve’s tail. Her arms were wrapped around her chest and she was rocking back and forth, humming softly and staring at the scrubby grass between her bare feet. She looked as though she’d been crying.
Something rustled to his left and she looked up eagerly. Nish hadn’t noticed it before, but with that pitch-coloured hair and pale skin, and the lush but compact figure, she reminded him of the girls from his homeland in distant chilly Einunar.
Nish felt a sudden pang of nostalgia for home and family. Because of the war, he’d been sent away from home at the age of sixteen to become a prentice artificer in one of the newfangled clanker manufactories. He hadn’t seen his mother, his sister or brothers, or Einunar since his eighteenth birthday. Now his siblings were gone and he had no idea how to find his mother. He felt utterly alone. Maelys was the only person who’d cared about him and, despite her folly, he’d treated her shabbily.
She looked around, uncomfortably, as if aware that she was being watched. Nish didn’t want her to think that he was spying on her. He probed with one foot until he encountered a dry stick and stepped firmly on it. She jumped at the sound and he went forwards, making plenty of noise, so he wouldn’t frighten her.
She turned to face him, her knees together modestly as if she were wearing a skirt rather than pants, and gave a little smile, so tentative yet so full of yearning. He paused in mid-stride, for it lit up her face, turned her from being an attractive girl to a beautiful one, and suddenly it struck him.
Nish wasn’t one of those men who thought every woman who smiled at him desired him. In his youth he’d discovered, cruelly, that they did not, though by the end of the war he’d learned to read men and women. The look in Maelys’s eyes was unmistakable. She didn’t know she was giving herself away, but it was as clear as daylight to Nish.
She was developing a romantic fondness for him (he shied away from the word love, which he couldn’t even bear to think about). But any kind of romantic yearning was unbearable to him now.
He did like Maelys, who was warm-hearted, generous and brave, and he was truly grateful that she’d done so much for him. But she wasn’t Irisis, the love of his life, his obsession ever since her death, and the only woman he wanted. He couldn’t even think of Maelys – so little, quiet and shy, the very opposite of Irisis – in that way.
As he stepped into the firelight, she rose to her feet and her face lit up. ‘Nish,’ she began, ‘I was so worried –’
There could be no future for the two of them, so it was better to crush her feelings right away, even if it made her hate him. It would be simpler if she did.
‘I deeply regret what I said earlier,’ he said formally but without a trace of warmth, ‘or at least, the way I said it. You tried to manipulate me and it went terribly wrong, but I should have been more measured.’ He couldn’t address the other issue, though: his broken promise. ‘I must also thank you for all you’ve done for me,’ he went on in clipped tones, and saw the light fade from her eyes. ‘I will never forget it. But don’t think that I feel anything more for you than gratitude. I never will, for I am in love with a beautiful woman before whose memory all other women pale to insignificance.’ He glanced around awkwardly. ‘Get your gear ready. We’re going.’
He regretted the words the instant they’d left his mouth; it was clear that he could not have wounded her more cruelly if he’d spent a year planning it. She flushed, then drew herself up to her meagre height and said with trembling pride, ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about. I’ll be ready in two minutes,’ then whirled and fled into the bushes between the pinnacles.
He heard her retching as if she were bringing up her heart, but shortly she staggered out again, wiping her mouth on a tuft of grass, and began stuffing the camp gear into her pack.
Long before Nish was ready she was standing by the flap-peter, avoiding his gaze. He couldn’t look at her either, so he shook Rurr-shyve from its slumber and unfastened its tethers. By the time he’d finished, Maelys had packed his gear and swung herself up into the front saddle.
He climbed into the rear one, which took every ounce of his strength, and slumped backwards, keeping as far away from her as he could. She took hold of the amulet, her back rigidly erect, put her wrist through the wisp-controller and urged the beast into the air.
Nish fastened the safety line around his waist and closed his eyes. I
t was as if he’d kicked the faithful dog that had saved him from drowning.
THIRTEEN
Maelys couldn’t speak for an hour or two – it hurt too much – but after that she remembered her duty and forced herself to put her feelings to one side. What mattered was her family, especially Fyllis, and Maelys would make any sacrifice to ensure their safety.
She tried to understand why Nish had acted so meanly. Had the years of confinement brought out his true character, or had it broken him? The latter, she told herself, for Maelys could not allow herself to believe she’d been so wrong about him.
Yes, he must be a broken man and, before he’d learned how to deal with his sudden freedom, she’d pressured him to become the Deliverer. It had been too much. How could she have been so arrogant?
The flappeter darted left, into a cloud. It was nearly dawn now and she was exhausted, but she still had to find a safe hideout, and soon. The God-Emperor’s minions must have been on their trail for ages.
As she went over the events of the evening, Maelys realised that Nish had been right. Five people had died because of her stupidity; the community of Byre had been destroyed and the villagers would be hunted down and punished. If she hadn’t gone there, Byre might have continued unchanged for another hundred years.
And yet, that hurt less than Nish’s rejection. She wiped her eyes, allowed Rurr-shyve its head and they fled into the dark.
Rurr-shyve was flying slowly down a winding, forested valley while Maelys looked for a safe place to land, for the sun was up already. As they passed over the crest of a hill she saw a large village spread out across the curve of the river, straight ahead. She wasn’t going to go anywhere near this one.
‘Turn away, Rurr-shyve.’
Rurr-shyve kept going. Since the rescue, the balance of power had shifted. The flappeter never refused an order but it took longer to obey, and went out of its way to make things uncomfortable for her. And once they camped, whenever she turned her back she could feel its compound eyes boring into her, their malice and their hunger. One day …
‘Turn away!’ she shouted, afraid of being seen.
The flappeter curved across the village square before banking right. People cried out and pointed, and a wisp-watcher rotated to watch which way they went.
Rurr-shyve snorted though its breathing tubes, and after another half league turned back to the river. ‘Fly on,’ Maelys snapped. ‘We can’t stop here.’
Rurr-shyve is thirsty. It put its head down, landed on a high, grassy bank, folded its paired legs and slid down. Before Maelys realised what it was up to it plunged deep into the river.
The water was so cold that it took her breath away, and she couldn’t swim. She tried to push to the surface but her left foot was caught in the stirrup. She could feel her chest tightening, her air running out, and the urge to thrash wildly was uncontrollable. Nish gripped her shoulder hard and she managed to resist her panic.
She was just easing her foot free when Rurr-shyve sucked in a bellyful, snapped its legs upright and burst through the surface in a deluge of water. It then sauntered – there was no other word for it – downstream to a point where the bank was low and walked out.
Maelys slid off, dripping. Rurr-shyve is hungry. It swung its head around and up to her, nuzzling her chest with its hard mouth.
She sprang backwards, wiping clots of slimy brown drool off her coat.
Juicy eating there.
‘You can’t eat your rider!’ she cried. ‘It’d hurt you too much.’
Rurr-shyve shook with what she interpreted as laughter. You don’t understand anything, little one. If I eat you, it won’t hurt me at all. There’s no loss, you see. It began to crop the lush grass and tall rushes.
She didn’t say anything. Rurr-shyve was testing her. Maelys had to find a way to reassert her mastery, though she couldn’t think of one.
The following evening she was looking for a camp site when, without warning, she began to hallucinate that she was flying around the ceiling of one of the God-Emperor’s torture chambers, looking down at bloodstained instruments and brutalised bodies. Rurr-shyve swerved wildly and the hallucination was gone.
‘What’s the matter?’ yelled Nish.
‘Must have dozed off,’ she muttered, thinking that it had been caused by lack of sleep, and headed for the nearest landing place, a windswept island in a frozen lake.
After dinner she went directly to her blankets and slept, but soon found herself in a different nightmare. A vast parade ground, like the one between Mazurhize and Morrelune, was carpeted with thousands of people, all lying on their faces clad in nothing but loin rags. The masked God-Emperor was stalking back and forth on their backs, flogging indiscriminately with a stiff right arm.
She must have cried out and woken herself, for Nish was sitting up in the rider’s sleeping cloak, staring at her in the dim firelight. Pretending to be half-asleep, she settled down.
The night after that she had a similar nightmare, twice, the second time so vividly that she woke, bolt upright and running with sweat. She could still hear the sound of the whip striking flesh, though none of its victims had made a sound – that wasn’t permitted. There was an unnerving moaning sound in her ears, though it took several moments before Maelys realised that it was coming from her own throat.
Nish was on his feet but she couldn’t face him at such a moment of weakness. She dropped down, pulled her coat over her head and lay under it, shaking, until his footsteps moved away.
The nightmare she had before dawn was much worse, for it featured Nish as a strutting popinjay, giggling while he watched people being tortured and executed. She woke shuddering, but the dream did not fade as her others always had. It remained perfectly clear and kept repeating all day.
Was she seeing the future? She knew how tempted Nish was, for she’d heard him crying out in torment when he thought she was asleep, refusing his father’s offers. What if he succumbed?
She was breathing so heavily that Nish woke and came to her. She tried to push him away, striking his chest with her fists, but he held her wrists until she collapsed back into sleep, and she was only vaguely aware of him kneeling by her, watching over her for what remained of the night.
They flew west then north along the mountain chain between the highest peaks into a remote, uninhabited land. Maelys didn’t have a destination in mind, though she was aware that, further north, the mountain chain broadened and became even more rugged. In that uncharted mass of towering mountains and hidden valleys they must be able to find a safe hiding place, at least for the winter.
Nish had barely spoken to her since they’d returned from the village. He spent his time on the ground exercising furiously, trying to regain his strength, though when flying he just stared into space, taking no interest in his surroundings. He hardly slept and seemed to be sinking further into depression. His promise didn’t seem to mean anything to him now. Nothing did, save running away. She couldn’t bear to think of him as a coward, but what other explanation was there?
And yet, though still weak and ill, he had gone down to Byre to rescue her, so how could he be a coward? Could it all be her fault for pushing him too hard before he was ready? It must be. His father had broken Nish and, before the world could hope for deliverance, he had to be put back together again.
What about her other duty? Despite the rejection, Maelys had to try again. His feelings for his dead lover were an unhealthy obsession brought on by ten years of solitary confinement. She had to help him overcome them, too.
Rurr-shyve turned sharply left, then right as she directed it through a rocky slot. It was late afternoon and the flap-peter was fighting a headwind so strong that it hurt her eyes and made her nose drip. Rurr-Shyve’s rotor-blade injury was healing well but Maelys was afraid the strain would dislocate it again.
Flying conditions would have been better at a higher altitude but they had to stay low, winding along each valley, for the cold was so intense higher up that Nish c
ouldn’t endure it.
Could fleshly deprivation be part of his trouble? The prune-mouthed aunts had often spoken scornfully about men’s appetites, and Maelys wondered if doing that duty with him might be the best way to get through to him.
Her heart began to race. Apart from the time when she’d caught him staring at her bosom, he’d studiously avoided looking at her figure, and it was clear he was never going to make any kind of approach.
The aunts had also sneered about how easily led men were, through a woman’s wiles. Maelys wasn’t convinced; her father had been a strong man who knew his own mind, but she couldn’t see any other option for herself. Since Nish was never going to make the first move, she had to try and seduce him.
The sun was low now. She went over what Aunt Haga had told her as she searched the barren landscape for a safe camp site. The sides of the valley sloped steeply here and were covered in grey scree with an occasional spindly bush. She hadn’t seen a cave in days, and they couldn’t camp on the windswept slope where there was neither water, shelter nor fuel for a fire. Further ahead the river angled through a gorge that looked even more inhospitable.
Rurr-shyve was labouring now and couldn’t go much further, for it hadn’t fed well in days and was starting to eye her ever more pointedly. It turned the corner, fighting the strengthening wind, and entered the gorge. The sun disappeared.
Maelys pulled her coat more tightly about her, thinking that they’d have to camp on the slope no matter what, which at least would put off her seduction duty for another day, when the gorge opened out into a steep, forested valley. To the left a series of caves extended along a band of white rock.
Rurr-shyve put its long neck down and headed for the river. After it had drunk and fed on a wiry water weed strung with float bladders that crackled and popped as it chewed, Maelys tethered it in the shelter of some rocks while Nish went up to the caves to set up camp, silent as usual.
