The Destiny of the Dead (The Song of the Tears Book 3)

by Ian Irvine

  The air-sled went shrieking towards the lower clearing but she knew Klarm would not reach it in time, and if Nish was still on the forest path he could not survive. The flood would tear the forest along the river to pieces then batter its way through the gorge, filling it from top to bottom.

  SIX

  Maelys plodded up to Yggur and Tulitine, who were staring at the churning floodwaters. Every step took an effort now. What was the point of going on? She didn’t see how Nish could have survived, and soon Klarm would come back for her.

  ‘Nish, Nish …’ she gasped.

  ‘Where is he?’ said Tulitine.

  ‘Klarm had him,’ Maelys said. She reached them and stopped, rubbing a lump on the back of her head where the air-sled had struck it. ‘I managed to free him, and he was running down through the forest …’

  ‘How long ago?’

  ‘About ten minutes, and I’m really afraid. The flood –’

  ‘I’m sure he’ll be all right,’ said Tulitine. ‘Nish would have heard it coming.’

  ‘But it was so quick …’ Maelys tried not to imagine what it would do to a human body; Nish’s body.

  ‘We saw Klarm fly over,’ said Yggur thickly, swaying.

  Tulitine put an arm around him, supporting him.

  ‘What’s happened down there?’ asked Maelys.

  ‘The Imperial forces seemed to be waiting for Klarm.’

  ‘The flood might have swept the militia away,’ said Maelys dully.

  ‘They were fairly high up.’

  ‘Yes, of course they were,’ said Maelys, feeling a trace of hope. ‘I sent them up there. Come on. We’ve got to check.’

  ‘We have business here first,’ said Yggur, and they headed on. ‘There’s something very strange about the caduceus and I’ve got to know what it is.’

  She watched them go, bewildered. What could be more important than finding Nish? Just minutes ago he had kissed her on the brow; his beard had been soft and silky. How could he be dead? She could not come to terms with the thought, yet nature struck randomly, not caring who lived or died …

  She had to pull herself together. ‘What’s the matter?’ she said, running after them. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘Not now!’ snapped Tulitine. ‘Help me get him to the caduceus.’

  ‘Why?’ Neither answered, so she went around to Yggur’s other side and tried to help him, but the taphloid grew so hot that it was burning her.

  ‘Aah!’ he gasped, doubling over. ‘You’re making it worse. Go away.’

  How could she be making it worse? She followed them, angry and uncomprehending, as they lurched through the ring of bodies. The caduceus was a dull orange, and looked smaller now. Originally, it had been the height of a small tree; now it was the size of a tall mancer’s staff. Its heat had baked the soil around it to the texture of earthenware. The rain had eased, but steam rose all around the caduceus.

  ‘No further,’ Yggur said to Tulitine, shaking her off.

  She stepped away, her eyes on him, but unreadable.

  He nearly fell, regained his balance and took a halting step towards the caduceus, holding his arms out like a blind man. ‘Why are you here?’ he said in a hoarse, old man’s voice. A sudden breeze whipped his wet hair out behind him. ‘Why did you call me back? What are you trying to tell me?’

  ‘Calling him?’ Maelys mouthed to Tulitine. ‘What’s he talking about?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said quietly. ‘But I believe him, and if such a powerful and alien device is calling, we’d better listen.’

  ‘If it is, it’s a trap,’ Maelys muttered.

  Yggur looked up raptly, as if seeing something visible only to him.

  ‘Mother?’ he cried, and fell to his knees before the caduceus, weeping.

  ‘What’s going on?’ said Maelys quietly. ‘He isn’t … er?’

  ‘Losing his wits?’ Tulitine gave a dry chuckle. ‘No, Yggur seems to be remembering part of his childhood. You know that his origins have always been a mystery.’

  ‘I knew he was a great mancer during the Time of the Mirror …’

  ‘Yggur was great long before that,’ Tulitine said quietly. ‘He was powerful in ancient times. He helped to create the Nightland and hurl Rulke into it, where he was held prisoner for a thousand years.

  ‘But no one knows where Yggur came from, and the source of his great power is another mystery. He was one of only two mancers whose gift was not crippled by the destruction of the nodes at the end of the war, because his power had never depended on nodes or fields, as other mancers’ had. It flows into him from an unknown place which not even he understands.’

  Yggur reached up with both hands towards the head of the caduceus, repeated, ‘Mother?’ and crashed onto the baked earth.

  His hair began to steam and frizzle. Maelys darted forwards to pull him away but, as she bent over him, the taphloid began to vibrate ever more wildly, slipped from her cleavage and cracked him on the head. He let out a great groan.

  ‘… and burn them to nothingness,’ a deep, rumbling voice sounded.

  Maelys jumped, for it had seemed to come from the taphloid, but how could that be? Her father had given it to her to protect her, though the voice had not been his. In fact, she’d never heard the taphloid speak before.

  Yggur’s groping left hand closed around it, he quivered and his eyes snapped open.

  ‘I know this.’

  Maelys, alarmed, tried to pull away, but he did not let go and the chain began to cut into the back of her neck. ‘It’s mine. How can you know it?’

  ‘By the feel of it in my hand. It is as familiar as my own dinner knife, though …’ Yggur studied the little device in puzzlement, ‘… it feels smaller than it once did.’

  ‘It’s made of solid metal. How can it become smaller?’ Maelys was alarmed now, for it was the only thing she had left from her father – from her life at Nifferlin, for that matter – and it was precious to her. ‘I’ve had it half my life and my father had it before that.’

  ‘But where did he get it?’ said Yggur.

  ‘I – I don’t know. I always thought he’d made it.’

  Yggur gave a scornful laugh and she flushed. ‘He would not have had the skill. This taphloid, as you call it, was made by a master in ancient times. It looks like Aachim work to me.’

  ‘But …’ said Maelys. ‘Anyway, we’re wasting time. We’ve got to go after Flydd and Nish.’

  ‘This matters more.’

  ‘They could be dying.’

  ‘Either the flood killed them or it didn’t,’ Yggur said harshly, ‘and if it didn’t, it will certainly have blocked the gorge. A few minutes more won’t make any difference. Hand it over.’ He jerked on the taphloid.

  Maelys turned to Tulitine for help, but she said, ‘Give it to him.’

  Maelys drew the chain over her head and handed the taphloid to Yggur, sure that she would never get it back. It was hot and vibrating again. He stood with the taphloid held loosely in his fist, head cocked to one side, eyes un-focussed.

  ‘Maintain the watch against Stilkeen, Yggur,’ said a deep, resonant voice from his fist, the same voice she’d heard a minute ago. ‘Maintain it always, and all will be well. But if you fail …’

  He gave a little stagger, and shook himself. ‘And clearly I did fail, since I have no memory of ever hearing Stilkeen’s name before it showed up.’

  ‘Did the taphloid say that?’ said Maelys, alarmed now.

  ‘It did. What else do you know about it?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Has anyone else recognised it?’ said Tulitine.

  ‘Not that I remember.’ Maelys thought back over the past months. ‘Flydd didn’t, and neither did Jal-Nish or Seneschal Vomix.’ She shivered at the thought of that monster, the cause of all her clan’s misfortunes, but thankfully he was dead. ‘Vivimord didn’t seem to think the taphloid was anything special; neither did Yalkara nor the Numinator.’

  ‘How very curio
us,’ said Tulitine.

  ‘Then why does it feel familiar to me?’ mused Yggur, looking more like his old self. ‘Did I see it in the hundreds of years I wandered, witless and without my powers, after the struggle with Rulke that finally put him into the Nightland? I must have done, and yet I have no memory of it, save for the way it feels in my hand.’

  He turned to stare at the caduceus. ‘I still feel as though it’s calling to me, but I can’t read what it’s trying to say. Should I take it with me?’

  ‘No!’ cried Maelys. ‘It’s a trap, it’s got to be; why else would Stilkeen have left it here?’

  ‘Perhaps you’re right. We’d better go back.’

  Tulitine offered him her shoulder but Yggur said, ‘I feel better now,’ and strode off towards the forest as though he were completely reinvigorated, his long legs covering two paces to Maelys’s one.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ she said to Tulitine. ‘How did he recover so quickly? Was it my taphloid?’ She had to keep calling it her own, though Maelys was beginning to fear that she would never get it back.

  ‘I think it must have been,’ said Tulitine uneasily. She went after Yggur, but slipped in the mud and fell to her knees with a small, stifled gasp.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ said Maelys, helping her up.

  ‘A sudden pain – in my leg bones this time. The Regression Spell is coming undone.’

  ‘You don’t look any different.’

  ‘And that’s peculiar,’ said Tulitine. ‘Normally, when this spell fails, the outside ages faster than what lies within, but with me it seems to be the other way around. The caduceus must be interfering with the Regression Spell.’ She drew a sharp breath, then pushed herself upright and took a painful step.

  ‘Is there anything I can do?’ said Maelys.

  ‘Give me your hand.’

  On reaching the forest, they found Yggur waiting at the entrance to a track high above the flood line. The rain had not resumed though the forest canopy dripped steadily. Tulitine winced with every footstep but made no complaint. As they approached the lower clearing Yggur slipped behind a tree.

  ‘What is it?’ said Maelys.

  ‘Shh! Klarm is circling, looking for survivors.’

  ‘Can … can you see any?’

  He did not answer, so she went down, her stomach clenched tightly. Nish, where are you? The height of the flood had passed and the water level was falling, though there was not a soul in sight.

  ‘Could the militia have gone through the gorge before the flood?’ she said, though she already knew the answer.

  ‘They were trapped up above the rock outcrop,’ said Tulitine in an empty voice.

  ‘That was a while ago,’ said Maelys, clinging to the hope, in spite of all logic, that they had survived. ‘They might have –’

  Yggur shook his head.

  The lower half of the clearing was a mess of mud and rock, boulders and tree trunks, while the gorge was now a torrent from wall to wall. The huge boulders that had previously choked the right-hand side could not be seen and the slender bridge had fallen.

  ‘Where are Klarm’s troops?’ said Maelys.

  ‘Swept away,’ said Tulitine in her seer’s voice. ‘All – swept – away.’

  It began to pour again. They waited until the air-sled had finished its circuits, whereupon it headed downstream above the gorge, flying low and slow.

  ‘We’d better make sure there are no survivors,’ said Yggur heavily, ‘though I’m sure Klarm would have found them if there were any. Try not to leave tracks.’

  They slogged across the sodden ground to the brown out-crop, behind which the militia had taken cover. The ferns had been torn off the lower face and a narrow, crescent-shaped pond had formed on the uphill side.

  ‘The gorge must have been blocked at first,’ said Yggur, ‘and there was nowhere for the flood to go but up the clearing. It washed everyone away, then the blockage burst and the flood drained through the gorge, carrying the dead with it.’

  Maelys forced her weary legs to the upper edge of the clearing but there was not a sign of human life. The disaster was so overwhelming that she could not think. Nish was gone, and dear old Flydd, and nothing seemed to have any meaning any more. She trudged down to Yggur and Tulitine.

  ‘If Klarm comes back,’ Tulitine was saying, ‘we’ll have to take him. Otherwise, with the really wet season coming, we’ll never get out of here.’

  How can we capture Klarm, Maelys thought. He’s got his knoblaggie, and the tears, and all we have is a burnt-out mancer, a crippled seer, and me. She looked down the slope. ‘Hey, I thought I saw someone down in that hollow.’

  She skidded down to the former pond by the river, now a long, narrow lake, then wished she had not, for the falling water had revealed many corpses trapped among the piled boulders and tangled tree trunks. Dozens of bodies lay in the water, all naked and broken. The force of the water had torn off their clothes and boots before smashing them against the obstacles.

  Maelys felt sick, but she had to make sure. She waded out to the nearest of the dead. ‘I don’t see Nish,’ she said, clinging to the faintest hope.

  ‘No,’ said Tulitine, who had hobbled down behind her on Yggur’s arm. ‘These all look like Klarm’s men, but I expect most of the bodies would have been swept through the gorge. Wait – I know that face. Isn’t he the fellow who went over to the enemy?’

  Maelys followed her to the figure draped backwards over a tree trunk. The long body was as broken as the others, but the man’s face was unscathed, the bitter cast to his otherwise handsome face erased in death. He looked at peace, but he would never go home to Gothryme.

  ‘It’s Colm,’ said Maelys, swallowing hard. ‘We were friends once, and I liked him a lot – there was a time when I thought that he was the one for me … but I was wrong. Poor Colm. He had such an unhappy life.’

  ‘His skin is pale; he’s not from these parts,’ said Tulitine.

  ‘He came from the island of Meldorin, originally, but his family was driven away from their home in the war and they lost everything. He never got over losing his inheritance, Gothryme Manor, and then the death of his sister, Ketila, killed him inside.’

  ‘An all-too-common story, but some of us cope better with it than others.’

  ‘Did you say Gothryme?’ said Yggur, staring at Maelys.

  ‘Yes. Do you know of the place?’

  ‘I stayed there a number of times, at the end of the Time of the Mirror, and afterwards.’

  ‘Then you may have known Colm’s ancient relatives, Karan and Llian.’

  ‘Indeed I did,’ said Yggur, and his frosty eyes grew hard. ‘We became friends, at the end.’

  ‘Colm said that they were famous once, and heroes, but they committed terrible crimes and became known as –’

  ‘Karan Kin-Slayer and Llian the Liar!’ Yggur ground out, his voice tight with rage. ‘Don’t say another word about them.’

  Maelys jumped. What was the matter with him? Had they betrayed him in some way? Even if they had, they had died two centuries ago, so why was he still so angry?

  ‘Colm couldn’t bear that shame,’ she said quietly. ‘He refused to believe it.’ Maelys touched Colm’s brow with her fingertips, then turned away. ‘There’s no sign of Nish. Let’s get going. I hate this place!’

  The whistling note of the air-sled sounded from downstream. ‘Quick, back to the forest,’ said Yggur. ‘Klarm is coming upriver. He has to think we’re all dead – it’s our only chance.’

  ‘He’s lost his army,’ said Maelys as they hurried towards the shelter of the rainforest. ‘How could he come after us?’

  ‘They were just the advance guard. His main army is enormous and as soon as he can bring it across the pass he’ll scour every ell of this valley, and the river downstream, and check every body. He has to make sure of us, and Nish, and you, Maelys.’

  ‘I thought you were going to try and capture Klarm,’ said Tulitine.

  ‘In my c
ondition, I don’t see how I can. Besides, something else has just occurred to me.’

  ‘Care to share it with us?’ snapped Tulitine. The pain was getting to her.

  ‘I will, once I understand it myself. Come on.’

  They kept to the shallow water pooled along the narrow floodplain beside the riverbank until they reached the forest, where Yggur led them to the upper track, then along it. Maelys followed in silence, numb with grief. Nish and Flydd were dead, almost certainly, Colm definitely, and it seemed as though the entire militia had been wiped out. With Yggur so weak, Tulitine crippled by the failing Regression Spell, and the really wet season coming, how could they hope to survive?

  ‘Where are we going?’ she said as they re-entered the upper clearing.

  ‘Back to the caduceus,’ said Yggur.

  Maelys stopped dead. ‘Again? We’ve already been there twice.’

  ‘It’s still calling me.’

  ‘Then we should run as fast as we can in the opposite direction.’

  ‘I think it wants something.’

  ‘I’m sure it does,’ Maelys muttered, ‘and it’s not to our good.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’ said Yggur, stopping to give Tulitine his arm, for she was walking ever more painfully.

  ‘Stilkeen took Jal-Nish, and threatened us,’ said Maelys. ‘And every time I’ve gone near the caduceus, my taphloid shuddered or grew warm. I’m afraid it is trying to attack it, or me …’ Now that’s odd, she thought, remembering that Stilkeen hadn’t seemed to see her.

  ‘Why would it want to attack you?’ said Yggur, as though she was utterly insignificant.

  Tulitine moved on and he went with her. Maelys trudged after them, so afraid that she could barely stand up.

  ‘The more important question,’ said Tulitine, gasping as she struggled across the slippery slope, ‘is why Stilkeen left the caduceus here.’

  They stopped at the edge of the baked ground. The caduceus had lost its previous orange heat and was now a black, rough-edged iron shaft with two small wings at the top, and the two long black serpents loosely coiled around it.

  ‘As a threat,’ said Yggur, holding the taphloid in his fist and frowning. ‘You were right, Maelys. It’s shuddering as though it’s trying to break free. Does it do that often?’