by Ian Irvine
Maelys felt sick. She couldn’t bear to look at him; at what she’d done to him. She wanted to run away but the crystal still had to be charged at the flame, and Phrune was in the way. He was shrunken now. His formerly plump skin had gone saggy and transparent. One hand kept twitching, sliding back and forth across the slab, but there was no life in his eyes.
She tried to heave him out of the way but he toppled off, hitting the floor with a flabby splat. She winced, then fed the rest of the amber-wood into the flame, hoping it would overcome the curse sufficiently for her to try again.
Taking a deep breath, she put her hand, holding the crystal, into the flame. It was hotter now, unpleasantly so, but she held her hand there for the count of thirty, until the tingling began again. Had she recharged the crystal? She couldn’t tell, though it was brighter than before.
The taphloid still hung from his neck. She wiped it on Phrune’s shirt then pulled the chain over his head, wrapped it and put it in her pocket. She’d have to scrub both taphloid and chain before she could bear to put it on.
Monkshart’s feet scrabbled on the floor. Surely he wasn’t recovering already? Maelys stumbled into the nearest shadows, concealing her clenched fist inside her pocket, for the crystal was growing brighter every second. So much flame had been trapped there that its light was making her fingers glow red. She dared not let him see. Maelys wasn’t game to take Monkshart on, whatever his condition.
He crawled out from under the slab and stood up, shakily. His eyes were open. The last ruined skin of his face was flaking off to reveal smooth, olive-dark skin that looked too young for a man of his age. Breathing raspily, he scooped congealed blood from the floor under the flame and rubbed it all over his body, even on the soles of his feet. By the time he’d finished, the skin he’d treated first was already flaking off.
He scoured the rest away with the backs of his hands, then held his arms out in front of him as if he couldn’t see and took a few halting steps, holding onto the edge of the slab with both hands.
‘Phrune?’ he said in a wispy voice. ‘Phrune, faithful friend, where are you?’
Phrune did not answer. Monkshart continued around the slab, blind eyes searching the darkness. One foot kicked the body. He crouched down, painfully, and felt around and along it.
‘Phrune?’ he whispered, stroking his acolyte’s swollen face, his bloody, lacerated mouth. ‘Phrune!’
The cry hinted at such depths of anguish that it sent a shudder down Maelys’s spine. They were monsters both, yet they had depended on each other – perhaps even loved each other in some twisted way, and she was moved by his agony, and his loss.
Monkshart prostrated himself over the body of the smaller man, weeping. ‘Phrune, Phrune, what will I ever do without you?’
He picked Phrune up, holding him in his arms with the younger man’s arms and legs flopping like the limbs of a cloth doll. A dribble of blood must have run into the hole then, for the cursed flame flared high again and in the sudden brightness Maelys saw that Monkshart was weeping. Tears of blood were oozing from his swollen eyes and falling onto Phrune’s cheek.
He stood there for such a long time that she was tempted to sneak around behind him and attack. She knew she should; one swift blow with the knife and his troubles would be over. And hers as well.
She was trying to find strength for the terrible, cold-blooded deed when something reminded her of the futures she’d seen in the Pit, and she faltered. What if this evil man were the key to Santhenar’s future – a good future? How could she tell? Her blow might usher in a worse world than the one she lived in now.
Monkshart let out another wrenching cry and the opportunity was lost as he fell to his knees and pushed Phrune’s still body under the slab. Monkshart scrambled on top and, with the fallen stiletto, carved a curving line across his own great chest, allowing his blood to fall directly into the flame.
This time it flared so high that it shrivelled the mucous crusts on the high ceiling. Monkshart’s wound soon scabbed over, however, and once it did, he half scrambled, half fell off and crawled in to Phrune. Shortly he gave a third anguished wail and came out again, his long head darting around wildly, his blind eyes open and staring.
Maelys eased back into the shadows, for he was looking for her and she knew he was bent on a terrible revenge.
‘You’ll pay for this, Maelys Nifferlin,’ he said in a voice as thick as the curdled blood on the floor. ‘I know Black Arts that can make a corpse scream in agony, that can torment even a bodiless spirit and cause lifeless bones to chatter in terror. You’ll pay and pay, and keep on paying a hundred years after your agonising death.’
He turned towards the shadows where she hid, trembling in every limb, opening his clenched fists into hooked claws. The cursed flame was burning in him and right through him now. He glowed in the dark; flames dripped like burning water from his knuckles and elbows, and the tip of his long nose.
Maelys couldn’t move; couldn’t speak, for she was frozen with terror. Even in the darkness he could see her, yet he was blind. She didn’t have the stamina to outrun him; certainly couldn’t hide from him.
He began to stalk her, an awful smile on his lips – like mad, frozen rage. His head was covered in Phrune’s dried blood. Bloodstains ran down his chest and patches of flaking skin were stuck all over him. He looked like a week-dead corpse that had been brought back to life, and nothing could stop him. Nothing!
He was just a few paces away when there came another colossal thump, like the one Maelys had heard earlier. Monkshart stopped, one foot in the air, took another step, then stopped again, head cocked. She made out a whistling sound from high above.
Monkshart looked blindly into the darkness, head tilted up. ‘He comes!’
Maelys edged backwards, trying not to make a sound. Her mouth was as dry as the crusts that had fallen from the ceiling.
‘I’ll be back for you, Maelys.’ Monkshart turned aside, trod on her staff, picked it up and tap-tapped his way into the darkness away from the triangular stairs.
She wasn’t game to run after him now and attack him while his back was turned. She had no courage left. Making sure the crystal was secure, Maelys headed back the way she had come. It had been a stroke of luck remembering that amber-wood was blessed as well as lucky, and a bigger one that its virtue had countered the curse of the flame sufficiently to remove her paralysis. But maybe that was the fortune of the amber-wood. She’d burned enough of it for a lifetime of good luck.
Maelys prayed that hers would hold long enough for her to get back to the hut, and that she could do something to help her friends when she got there, though even once she climbed out into the fresh, wind-whipped air of the mire she couldn’t get the smell of Phrune’s blood out of her nostrils.
FIFTY-TWO
In the cavern, the God-Emperor was silent for a long time. He appeared to be consulting Reaper, though about what, Nish could not imagine. His father’s power passed all comprehension. Finally Jal-Nish smiled thinly behind his mask. ‘It’s seems there’s more going on here than I’d thought. Where is the other one – the girl?’
‘Are you telling me you don’t know, Father?’ said Nish. ‘Surely you’re not admitting to a weakness?’
‘Spare me your third-rate taunts, Son; you’ve never had the ability to sting me. You might as well say, for I can soon find out by calling to Gatherer. Not all the amber-wood in the world can hide her from me, this close.’
Nish knew it to be true, but he didn’t think his father could see into Maelys’s heart with the tears, and so he risked a lie. ‘She broke during the horror of Flydd’s renewal and fled into the mires. We were fighting your bladder-bats and flappeters at the time and didn’t see her go.’
‘My Imperial Guard will soon take her, unless the stink-snappers get her first. It makes no difference, either way.’ Jal-Nish surveyed them each in turn, first Nish, then Zham, Colm and finally Flydd, and not even Flydd could hold the God-Emperor’s adamantine ga
ze. ‘I’ve reconsidered.’
Nish looked sceptical. ‘Yes, I know you believe that I never go back on a threat,’ his father went on, ‘but a man can change his mind. Indeed, when circumstances change, he must change with them, or fail. And so, because I do admire the courage you’ve shown, and your boldness and tenacity, I will offer each of you a choice. Save you, Flydd. You’re mine! But that lingering pleasure I plan to keep till last.’
Nish didn’t believe his father for a moment. This had to be another of his malicious games.
Jal-Nish slipped his hand into Reaper and Nish heard the windlasses whirr and the cables creak. Through the mossy curtain he could see the sky palace moving away until it was just a speck in the distance, connected to the cave only by the greatly lengthened and perilous plank.
‘For our privacy,’ said the God-Emperor. ‘Cryl-Nish, you will be first. You have one last chance, but I’m not going to make a song and dance of it like some villain in a melodrama. I’ll put it simply. I want you by my side. You’re all I have now – you are all, aren’t you? If you’ve got a child into the belly of this Maelys girl, say the word and I’ll recover her from the mires in an instant.’
Nish considered lying and saying that he had made Maelys pregnant, to save her, but what if she had escaped? If Jal-Nish discovered that he’d lied, it would condemn her. ‘I’ve not touched her in that way, Father.’
‘Really?’ said Jal-Nish. ‘Then what about the hundreds of girls Vivimord plied you with while you were playing at being the Deliverer? Surely you’ve impregnated one or two of them?’
His father had always belittled Nish’s efforts. Perhaps that was why he so craved success, greatness, adulation. But he answered truthfully. ‘I’ve had intimate relations with no one since my escape from Mazurhize.’
‘You astound me. Why ever not? Surely you haven’t lost –’
‘I desired every one of them, Father. My lust was like a live animal inside me, gnawing at my vitals, but I would not give in to Monkshart and let him manipulate me so crudely.’
Jal-Nish considered that, head to one side. ‘There’s more to you than I’d thought. Very well, I have a proposition for you.’
‘Yes?’ Nish said hoarsely, feeling his heart making wild, erratic thumps. ‘What is it this time?’
Jal-Nish took a deep breath, didn’t speak for a long moment, then said hastily, as if it had taken all his courage, ‘Come back to me, Cryl-Nish. Serve me willingly, because you care for your father.’ He held up his hand as Nish opened his mouth to speak.
‘No, allow me to finish. I’ve done evil, Son. Terrible, terrible evil, for a long time. I admit it and I wish to make amends. With you by my side, helping to show me the right path, the path you’ve largely followed since your salutary flogging at the manufactory, I hope and pray that I can make amends. Well, what do you say?’
Of all appeals his father might have made, this was the least expected, and Nish didn’t know how to respond. The offer tempted him unbearably, because it expressed the line of his own earlier thoughts. For a long time he’d clung to the hope that if he joined his father he could turn him aside from evil. How Nish wanted to. And if he gained power and respect for himself that way, surely that would be a path to greatness he could feel proud of?
Nish was about to say yes when his eye fell upon his father’s hand, still partly enveloped in Reaper as he fondled the Profane Tear with which he had caused so much suffering. No, Nish thought, this is wrong. Father is the very God of Liars and he’s lying to me now.
Or was he? What if he were sincere? Nish couldn’t believe that Jal-Nish was sincere, but anything was possible with his father. How was he to decide?
He looked around the cavern but the faces of his companions were no help. If only Irisis were here, he thought foolishly. She would know in an instant. He tried to conjure up her image but this time nothing came. He could only rely on his judgement, and he was dreadfully afraid that he was going to make the wrong choice.
Nish wanted desperately to take up his father’s offer. He yearned for it, but was afraid he wanted it for all the wrong reasons: not for the hope of turning an evil man to good, but rather for the acclamation he, Nish, would gain if he did so. For the glory, the power, the respect, and also for the possibility that Jal-Nish really could give him what he wanted most in all the world.
In the moment of that realisation, Nish knew his father was lying, manipulating him, and he had to refuse his offer. It hurt bitterly, but there was no choice.
‘You’re playing with my mind, Father, for the most cynical of motives. I know what you’re thinking and it’s not about making amends for the evil you’ve done. You’d say anything to get me back, but you’ll never change. You’re a monster and you’ll be a monster until the day you die. I cannot serve you.’
This time Jal-Nish’s expression didn’t flicker, though his back grew ramrod-stiff. ‘Never tell a man that you know what he is thinking – clearly you have no idea, for my plea was heartfelt. But if I must go forward alone, so be it.’ He waved a hand in dismissal and paced to the opening of the cave, then out onto the plank, where he stood swaying in the wind.
Suddenly, awfully, and with perfect clarity, Nish’s clearsight told him that he’d been wrong. Jal-Nish had been sincere after all. He had been prepared to change, and had hoped desperately that his only son would help him do so. Nish couldn’t imagine what might have caused such a transformation, but he had to seize the opportunity to wrest some good out of this monster.
He started forwards, then stopped, realising that it was too late. His father was a proud man. What must it have cost him to humble himself in such an appeal? And how much more humiliating to be rejected so coldly?
It would only reinforce the darker side of his father, his grim view about the faithlessness of humanity in general and his family in particular, and most of all his selfish, disrespectful son. Jal-Nish, despite his demeanour, was shattered. He’d really believed that Nish would come to him this time, but rejection would turn his father irrevocably to the dark side of his nature. The offer would never be repeated.
What a fool I am, Nish thought. Father is right. I am unworthy.
He was belabouring himself thus when stone squealed at the back of the cave and a door grated open on the flat surface between the half-columns. Stale air gushed out, laden with dust, and before it had cleared a man stood swaying in the opening. He staggered through and the door slammed shut.
Nish didn’t recognise the intruder at first. He was very tall, with an elongated head completely bare of hair, as if it had recently fallen out. His olive-dark skin was baby-smooth but swollen and streaked with stains that might have been dried blood, and his face was flushed as if he were burning up with fever. He had a beaked nose, black, swollen eye sockets and eyes that stared straight ahead, unblinking, as if he were blind. He was clad in pale robes thickly covered in grey dust and more rusty bloodstains.
Jal-Nish parted the moss curtain and stepped into the cavern entrance, his grim face transformed. ‘Vivimord! This is a pleasure.’ He was actually smiling.
Vivimord, or Monkshart, did not smile. He moved as wearily as an old man, as if the events of the past hours had drained him to the dregs. ‘It’s been a long time, Jal-Nish.’ He shuffled forwards and held out his hand.
Nish didn’t think his father would take it, but he did.
‘You look terrible,’ said Jal-Nish. ‘Aftersickness?’
Vivimord nodded. ‘Taking on the persona of Vomix, then calling down your flappeter to carry me up here, took more power than I had at my disposal. It began to consume me from the inside; and then I suffered an unexpected attack which nearly finished me.’ He related the story of Nish’s barrel of mucilage.
‘He’s a man with an innovative mind, my son,’ said Jal-Nish, again studying Nish thoughtfully. ‘But you survived?’
‘Faithful Phrune hauled me all the way to the cursed flame – thank you for breaching its age-old defences, Jal-Nish, e
lse I’d be dead hours ago – and there shed his own life’s blood into the fire to cure me of my afflictions. I’ll miss his service.’
‘He served his purpose,’ said Jal-Nish indifferently. ‘So, what of you, Vivimord? Do you still hold to your notion of turning my son into the Deliverer and toppling me?’
‘I do,’ said Vivimord, ‘though it grows ever more unlikely that I’ll succeed.’
‘You rate yourself lower than I do, but …’ Jal-Nish’s cheek spasmed and he seemed to be going through an inner struggle, as if the rejection of his previous appeal made it impossible to try again. He went on in a rush, ‘I’ve never had more need of an ally, and you were ever my closest friend. You were more a son to me than that treacherous little worm who cares not a jot for his family.’ He slashed his stiff arm towards Nish. ‘You’re the only man I ever truly trusted, Vivimord, and I need you now. There’s a growing threat in the void and not even with the tears can I face it alone.’
It hurt. Nish could never have imagined that his father’s words would cut him so. He went to his knees, holding his head in his hands and cursing his folly.
Vivimord looked as though he’d anticipated the appeal; moreover, that he’d been moved by it. ‘Ah, old friend, would that I could. But you forget – I know everything about you. I know all the evil you’ve done to get where you are today. Shocking evil and dreadful betrayals.’
Jal-Nish bowed his head. ‘I have. I acknowledge it.’
‘I know how much you’ve gained; or should I say, how little. And what it’s cost you.’
‘Aye,’ said Jal-Nish. ‘It’s cost me. It’s cost me every single thing I ever cared about.’
‘And yet you can’t turn your back on what you’ve done.’
‘I might have done.’ Jal-Nish glanced at Nish. ‘I tried, but it came to nothing and I cannot try again.’
