by Ian Irvine
Nish pulled his blade free with an effort, wiped it on the tusker’s flank and turned around. Zham bore another streak on his thigh. His tusker was on the ground too, though still kicking. Zham was bent over, panting, and his face was grey.
Then, as Nish wavered towards him, Zham lay down his sword and bowed to his fallen foe. ‘You fought nobly for your young, proud beast, and I salute you.’
The tusker’s back trotters tore at the earth but it was unable to rise. Zham took his sword, touched the beast on each shoulder and then on the top of the head, then killed it with a single clean thrust between the ribs into its heart.
Zham turned, saw Nish hobbling towards him, and smiled. ‘For a minute there I thought I’d let you down, Deliverer.’
‘Call me Nish,’ Nish said. ‘From now on you are my brother, and I know you’ll never let me down.’
The big man stood up straight, shocked, and a single tear made its way down his broad cheek. ‘Surr,’ he said, bowing until his head touched the ground, ‘You do me an honour no man can deserve. I cannot –’
Nish raised him up again and embraced him. ‘Are you denying the Deliverer?’
‘No – of course not, Del – Nish.’ He pulled away, scrubbed at his eyes with his free arm, and looked Nish over carefully. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Bruised but unharmed. That was the act of a noble man, Zham.’ Nish meant it. Zham might be an uneducated peasant but he possessed more nobility than most of the nobles Nish had met.
‘How could I not salute such a stubborn foe?’
‘You did not salute the nylatl when you put it down.’
‘That was no natural creature … Nish. It was an evil thing created by an evil mind.’ He turned away, limping badly, hesitated, then came back. ‘Surr, Nish,’ he said diffidently, ‘could you look at my wounds for me?’
The two gashes in his right thigh needed cleaning, for tuskers used their tusks for rooting around in the earth and tearing apart live and dead prey. After he’d washed them carefully, Nish cut a curve through the papery bark of the lotion tree, gathered the thick exudate on his knife blade, spread it over the wounds and bound them up.
‘We’ll eat well tonight.’ He was salivating at the thought of a thick slice of roasted tusker and nicely crisped crackling.
They did better than that, for Zham found the twist-horn deer in the shrubbery. It had been easy prey for the tuskers, though they’d not had time to despoil the body, so they dined on baked venison as well. It was the finest meal Nish had eaten since going to prison.
Nish sighed and glanced across the fire towards Zham, who was carving strips of venison off a shoulder bone, spearing them with the point of his knife and transferring them to his mouth in an unending procession that had been going on for twenty minutes. The wounds troubled him when he moved, though his broad face was unlined and his thoughts seemed focussed on no more than his dinner. Zham didn’t talk much, but he didn’t seem to have a worry in the world and Nish envied him that inner peace.
For himself, the Defiance’s victory over his father’s army had rejuvenated him, and this escape allowed him to feel that he’d taken control of his destiny at last, yet it gave him little joy. Why was that? It took him some time to work it out.
He was feeling increasingly guilty about his moral cowardice at Tifferfyte: both his failure to stand up to Monkshart and Phrune over Maelys, and his complicity in allowing the villagers to sacrifice themselves on his behalf. He needed to talk to someone about it and perhaps Zham, after their shared experiences today, might be able to help.
‘Do you think I did wrong, Zham?’
‘Surr?’ Zham paused, a slice of venison halfway to his mouth, looking puzzled. As well he might, for Nish had not previously spoken of his troubles.
‘When we fled Tifferfyte, we … we couldn’t take the villagers with us. They remained behind, fighting to the last man and woman so we could get away.’
‘I heard the story from Jil,’ said Zham. ‘They were believers. They made that sacrifice willingly, as would I.’ He resumed eating, though not with the same gusto as previously.
‘But I went along with the plan; I hardly protested at all. What’s worse, I came to believe that it was right, and that I deserved their sacrifice, because as the Deliverer my life was worth more than theirs. I – I can’t come to terms with that, Zham. Was that the first step on the downward path? Am I –?’
Zham shifted on his log, looked down at the shoulder bone, began to carve another slice from it, then abruptly tossed it into the fire and stood up. ‘I know you’ll always do the right thing, surr. I’m going to turn in now. Good night.’
The following morning Nish tried again, but again Zham avoided the issue, and Nish’s eyes. ‘I’m sure you’ll never let us down, surr,’ he said as he rose and heaved the pack on his back. ‘We know we can rely on the Deliverer.’
Yet Nish had been a leader of men and knew how to get the best out of them, and deal with their weaknesses too, so he didn’t try again. Zham was also a believer, a simple soul, and perhaps he didn’t want that belief challenged in any way.
Nish wondered if he had weakened Zham’s faith in him.
He was also increasingly troubled by the future he’d seen in the Pit. Nish was coming to question it more every day. Had he, by fleeing so precipitously, done exactly what his father wanted him to? Could the vision he’d seen in the Pit be yet another way of manipulating him, or a malicious joke by his father?
No, that’s how Jal-Nish wanted him to think. He wanted Nish to doubt everything he heard, and everyone he met; to cut him off from the world in a prison of his own making.
And the Deliverer’s rebellion could fail simply by taking too long to get going, which might also be part of his father’s plan. If he were close to finding the three things he needed to become invincible and immortal, and to achieve complete mastery of the tears, including the ability to close off their powers to anyone else, everything that delayed the rebellion worked in the God-Emperor’s favour.
He sighed and rubbed the itchy scar below his right collarbone where the nylatl had stuck him. Even after all this time the spine wound still troubled him occasionally – a deep, hot ache that spread all the way to the shoulder and temporarily robbed him of strength in that arm. It seemed to be getting worse.
‘Well,’ said Zham as they slogged to the top of the ridge, then walked out onto a platform of rock that formed a natural lookout among the trees, ‘we’re here –’ He broke off. ‘That’s a bit of a bugger.’
‘What?’ Nish said wearily.
He settled on a stone, not too close to the edge, which dropped away sharply into a broad valley covered in forest. They’d been trudging through rainforest for a fortnight and it extended in every direction as if to the ends of the world, save to the west where the distant Wahn Barre reared high, jagged and snow-capped even in these northern latitudes.
But much closer, standing up out of the rainforest like soot-blackened chimney pipes so high that the tops of most of them were shrouded in cloud, were dozens of tall, cliff-bounded plateaux. Some were half as broad as they were tall; others mere needle-like spires. Some were grouped in clusters while others stood alone, but at least half of them, if viewed from the right angle, could have been the slender, sky-piercing peak he’d seen in that fog-shrouded vision in the Pit of Possibilities.
Nish stared at the vista in dismay. ‘How am I supposed to tell the right one?’ He tried to recall the details of his vision, but they wouldn’t come.
‘The plateau country covers a big area,’ said Zham. ‘Got to be six leagues by four. It’ll take ages to check them all.’
Nish didn’t answer. A green fly buzzed around his head and he waved it away irritably. ‘Well, failing any other way of identifying the right one, that’s just what we’ll have to do.’
Five days later they were still searching. Nish had crossed seven peaks off his sketch map but there were another ten to go, and the only way to tell w
as by slogging to the base of each peak and looking up. From that vantage point he could tell instantly that it wasn’t the peak he’d seen in the Pit of Possibilities. He’d tried to use clearsight, though without success. It had seldom been available to him since he’d come out of the maze. Nish wondered if he’d damaged it through overuse there.
‘This is going to take weeks,’ he muttered.
It was late afternoon, it had been raining all day and they were fifty spans up a cleft in the latest pinnacle, where they could see over the rainforest to the next group of peaks. An overhang sheltered them from the rain that fell constantly around the plateaux, even from clear skies, though they were soaked through anyway. Their clothes hadn’t been dry in a fortnight and everything smelled mouldy, including his skin, which was peppered with mosquito bites.
This peak, like the others, rose sheer for at least a thousand spans of wet, treacherous, unclimbable cliff. The only way up any of the pinnacles, as far as Nish could tell, would be via the precipitous clefts that scored their sides, and even the best of these would be a dangerous climb. Incessant wind shook the writhen trees growing from crevices near the top, gales that could tear an unwary climber off.
Zham was nibbling at a vegetable he’d found on the way. It resembled a doughnut-shaped ear of corn though the individual kernels were like separate bright red teeth. ‘Don’t have weeks.’
‘What …?’ Nish looked in the direction Zham was staring. A flappeter was hovering over the lookout where they’d stood five days ago, while another was following a track horribly like the path they’d taken to the first pinnacle. His father had found them.
‘It looks as though they’re tracking us. Well, you, I suppose.’
Nish gave Zham a keen glance. ‘It does, though I don’t see how they could.’
Zham shrugged. He wasn’t one to waste time on fruitless speculation. ‘Do you want to go to the next peak?’
‘Might as well.’ So much for fortune turning my way, Nish thought. ‘Can we reach it before dark?’ He couldn’t see the sun through a thick overcast, but night fell with unfamiliar suddenness in these latitudes.
‘No. Better camp here.’
‘Can we risk a fire?’
Zham frowned. ‘Perhaps a small one, deep in that cleft where it won’t be seen. But just long enough to cook dinner.’
Unfortunately all the wood was saturated and so rotten that their fingers went right through it, though in the search they discovered a space deep in the cleft where they could sleep in reasonable comfort.
‘I’m going to turn in,’ said Zham, as he did every night immediately after dinner, as if to forestall uncomfortable discussions or disturbing revelations.
Nish grunted. Zham was a superlative guard and an excellent bushman, but poor company. He was happy to sit in silence for hours. He drifted through life, doing what he was ordered, and didn’t seem to want anything more.
Nish pulled his coat around him and leaned against the moist rock, gazing across the forest. What made the plateau he’d seen in the Pit so unique? He couldn’t recall, though he still remembered his euphoria when he’d had the vision. It had felt so right for him; so lucky, but now he was going to lose the chance for it, as he’d lost everything else to his all-dominating father. It couldn’t be borne. He couldn’t give in to him.
He sat brooding as darkness fell and the cluster of pinnacles he’d been staring at faded into the black of the night. Nish had lost track of how long he’d been there – it could have been hours – when he became aware of a tiny spark of light in the darkness.
He blinked, then rubbed his eyes, but the spark was still there. And oddly, it seemed to be coming from one peak in the cluster of pinnacles he’d been staring at earlier. He couldn’t tell which one.
‘Zham?’ he said softly.
The big man rolled over in his bedroll, then rose and in one swift movement was beside him. ‘What is it?’
‘Can you see a light out there?’
‘Yup! Coming from one of the pinnacles.’ Zham scratched his straw-like hair – Nish could hear his fingernails rasping through it – ‘The middle one of that cluster of three we saw earlier, to the left of the main group.’
‘Are you certain?’
‘I can still see the pinnacles in my mind, as clear as a picture.’ Zham counted under his breath. ‘Yup, I’m sure.’
Doubtless that was why he was such a good bushman. Nish couldn’t have told which pinnacle the light came from. ‘And it’s at least as high as we are, or we’d never see it for the forest.’
‘Higher, I’d say.’
‘Is it a camp fire?’
‘Could be.’
‘Do you think it could be a sign?’
Zham shrugged audibly.
‘It’s got to be,’ Nish said to himself. ‘This land is practically uninhabited, and no ordinary person would waste their energy climbing these peaks. So whoever it is, they’ve come here for the same reason we have – to find what’s at the top, and they know which pinnacle it is. They’re trying to get there first.’
‘Or it’s an ambush.’
‘It could be, but I’ve got to take the risk, Zham. Can you find the way there in the darkness?’
‘Yup.’
‘How long do you think it’ll take?’
‘Couple of hours.’
A surge of fury went through Nish at the thought that someone was trying to take what was rightfully his, but he controlled it. The light could also be meant to lure him in. ‘Let’s get going. And when we’re near, keep your eyes open for a trap.’
They reached the pinnacle without incident, and the moment he touched the rock and stared up at the peak’s outline against the night sky, Nish knew it was the one. A wave of relief swept through him. The vision in the Pit had been right after all. At least, so far.
‘This is it, Zham,’ he said quietly. ‘Can we climb it?’.
Zham rubbed his bristly chin. ‘We’ll have to be mighty careful. They’re bound to have guards.’
He moved along until he came to a deep cleft in the rock, like a ravine cutting into the pinnacle. He felt his way inside and at the inner end began to climb. Nish followed him, moving slowly on the wet rock, testing each hand- and foothold before he put his weight on it.
‘Careful now,’ Zham whispered as they edged up a crevice. The mossy stone was hard to get a good grip on. ‘I can smell smoke.’
Nish could too. ‘Any guards?’
Zham didn’t answer, but loosened his sword in its sheath. Nish did the same. He didn’t understand how Zham could see to put his feet down, but the big man must have been as clear-sighted as an owl, for he hadn’t once slipped or stumbled.
‘It’s up beyond this rock,’ said Zham. ‘I don’t think there can be many of them. Stay back. Leave the fighting to me.’
Nish was happy to, though he couldn’t imagine how one would engage in a sword fight in such a dark, cramped space. Zham crept around the outcrop, drew his monstrous sword, sprang, then let out a cry of astonishment. ‘Lady Healer!’
Nish scrambled up after him. The cleft was broader here, the width of a small room, though bounded on either side by sheer rock. The coals of the camp fire revealed two people lying on a banana-shaped patch of sloping ground between the boulders, wrapped in cloaks. The smaller one shot up, brushing the mass of black hair out of her eyes with an achingly familiar movement.
‘Maelys!’ Nish choked. ‘I – they told me you were dead.’
‘Monkshart and Phrune tried their hardest.’ She scrambled to her feet, her face alight and eyes glowing. He’d never seen her look so lovely.
Zham stirred the fire with his boot and the man beside Maelys sat up, rubbing his eyes.
‘I’m Nish,’ Nish said, rather abruptly, extending his hand. ‘Who are you?’
‘You may call me Thommel,’ the fellow said, and stood up.
Tall, lean and hollow-cheeked, he reminded Nish vaguely of someone, though he could not think who. Thommel d
id not put out his hand and Nish took an immediate dislike to him. Thommel and Maelys exchanged glances as if they were the closest of friends, or even better than friends. She nodded as if agreeing to something previously discussed, which annoyed Nish too.
‘This is Zham,’ Nish said. ‘Zham, Maelys who helped to rescue me from Mazurhize and saved my life.’ Zham was still staring at her with his mouth open. ‘Do you know each other?’ Nish was feeling more bewildered by the second.
‘Surr,’ said Zham, gazing at Maelys with sheep-like adoration, ‘this is the Lady Healer who cut the arrow out of you after the battle, and tended you afterwards. Don’t you remember?’
‘I saw you in my fever,’ said Nish, ‘but when I woke, Monkshart told me it was a hallucination. Why didn’t you come back?’
‘Tulitine said I was a threat to Monkshart’s plans and he must never learn I was among the Defiance. He was always trying to keep us apart, if you recall.’
‘But … how did you get into the camp? Phrune said you were killed in Tifferfyte.’
As she sketched out what had happened since he’d carried her to her room in Tifferfyte, Nish just kept shaking his head. Maelys started forwards, as if to embrace him, then faltered.
‘What are you doing here?’ said Nish.
‘When I heard that you’d fled, I had to come after you,’ she said softly. ‘And Thommel … he knew where this pinnacle was. He’d been here before.’
‘You told my most secret business to a stranger!’ He felt a sudden rush of anger, magnified by the way Thommel was looking at Maelys. What was their relationship, anyway? Their sleeping arrangements looked rather snug. He tried to tell himself that it was none of his business, that he didn’t care about her that way and never would, but found it oddly hard to take.
‘How else could I find Thuntunnimoe? I was afraid for you, Nish. The whole world was hunting you and I was your only friend.’
