by Ian Irvine
‘An honest man would have spat in Vomix’s face,’ said M’lainte. ‘But a prudent merchant with flexible morals would see where his best interests lay.’
‘So Nish was right. Yulla has been betrayed,’ said Persia bleakly, ‘and everyone who aided her is in peril. And our families too, what’s left of them, if Vomix succeeds.’ She stared blindly over the side for a moment before going on. ‘His troops must be embarking on Pensittor’s fleet now, preparing to set sail for the south at all speed.’
Nish swayed on his serpent staff as they drew closer to the ship, trying to put as little weight on his injured thigh as possible.
‘Even if this vessel is Yulla’s, what’s the point of going on? I can’t attack the might of the empire with a handful of troops.’
‘You certainly can’t if you’re not at Morrelune in thirteen days,’ said M’lainte. ‘And you must go there, for that’s where the fate of Santhenar will be decided. It’s also where Flydd will come, whether he finds the true fire or not.’
‘I’ve got nothing left,’ said Nish, grinding his teeth with every bump and lurch of the air-sled. ‘I can’t do it.’
‘Nish, we had no hope from the beginning,’ Flangers said. ‘We never expected to take Blisterbone, nor hold it against Klarm’s army, but we did. And we bloodied Vomix’s nose back there, and made him look like a fool. I say we go on, because we can’t go back and we can’t give in. The moment we put a foot on the path to Morrelune, we had no choice but to follow it all the way to victory – or oblivion!’
It was a long speech for Flangers, who was taciturn by nature.
‘And you’ll feel better once your leg has healed,’ said M’lainte. ‘Snap out of it, Nish. Everything relies on you.’
If M’lainte had meant to be encouraging, she failed dismally, but Nish reminded himself of all those who had died so that he could stand here today, and knew he could not let them down. ‘All right. Head for the ship.’
They were gliding down when Persia said quietly, ‘M’lainte, Pensittor’s ships are faster than Yulla’s.’
‘And the scriers back there saw which way we headed,’ said M’lainte. ‘Therefore, Vomix will send his fastest ships after this one.’
‘We’d better fly directly to Morrelune,’ said Nish.
‘I have to return the air-sled to Yulla. It may be all she has left,’ said M’lainte.
‘She’ll be in Vomix’s cells by now.’ Nish did not want to give up the air-sled; it was the only advantage he had. ‘If she’s –’
‘Alive at all,’ Persia said bleakly.
‘Yulla is a wily old dog,’ said M’lainte, ‘if I can use so vulgar an expression. All her life she’s been alert for treachery –’
‘Not alert enough,’ snapped Nish, for the pain was getting worse. ‘She didn’t see this betrayal coming.’
‘Maybe she did, but had no way of getting word to us. Anyway, I said I’d bring the air-sled back and that’s what I’m going to do.’
‘You’ll lose it, and your life,’ Nish said bitterly.
‘I too am a wily old hound,’ smiled M’lainte, ‘and I don’t think my time is up yet.’ She looked over the side. ‘It’s definitely Yulla’s ship. Take us down.’
THIRTY-SEVEN
On the ice platform outside the cubular door of the city of Stassor, the four of them took hold of the caduceus. Maelys’s pale hand was lowest, since she was much smaller than the others; next was Malien’s weatherworn and long-fingered hand, then a gap to Tulitine’s slender fingers, her flesh pink and blue, sluggish blood clearly visible through transparent skin, and another gap to Yggur’s big dark hand.
‘I’m not sure how to get to Aachan,’ he said shakily, for he was far from fully recovered. ‘Making a portal to a place you know is hard enough, but travelling between worlds is far more perilous than jumping within them, and I’ve never been to Aachan.’
‘You have seen it clearly, though,’ said Malien.
‘I have?’ said Yggur, frowning.
‘It was at the end of the Time of the Mirror, when Maigraith took Rulke’s body and his construct to Aachan, where Yalkara and the other surviving Charon had gathered. They were about to go back to the void –’
‘I wish they had,’ gritted Maelys, ‘and taken Maigraith and Yalkara with them.’
‘As I was saying,’ said Malien pointedly, ‘the Charon were preparing to return to the void when my people attacked. They were about to kill Maigraith when Yggur did something that had never been done before, and saved her life.’
‘I loved her, once,’ said Yggur, ‘long before she became the Numinator.’ His mouth twisted. ‘But she would not have me. She cast me aside.’
‘That day you did something that should have been impossible, and no mancer has ever understood how you did it. You fired a bolt of force across the Way between the Worlds to destroy the construct. And to do that, you had to see Aachan clearly.’
‘You’re right,’ said Yggur in amazement. ‘I did! Though I cannot remember how I did it.’
‘I’m not surprised. It nearly killed you.’
‘I remember the pain – awful, tearing pain, as if my inner organs were being torn apart. So! I have felt worse than I do now, and yet I recovered. I – can – do – this.’ He straightened his bowed back. ‘Ready, Maelys?’
‘What?’ She had lifted her hand from the caduceus. ‘Sorry.’ She took a firm grip, expecting a painful passage … if the portal worked at all.
It went so dark that Maelys could not see their hands. She was weightless – she no longer felt the heavy pull of gravity on her breasts, nor the accompanying tension that was always present in her shoulder muscles. Air whispered around her ears and she floated for some seconds, her weight slowly coming back, though not as heavily as previously, before she settled on something hard.
When her sight returned, the light was dim and ruddy, the air cool and humid; it smelled powerfully of sulphur and tingled in her nostrils. Their four hands appeared, placed as they had been before, with Yggur’s big chest blocking her view. Looking to one side, she made out a dismal black plain, beyond which shard-like mountains marked a jagged horizon. A small red sun hung a third of the way up the sky, haloed by yellow bands, its meagre light struggling to penetrate the thick air.
Yggur staggered, his fingers slipped and he clung to the caduceus for support, pulling it backwards. Maelys and Tulitine, who were on the opposite side, struggled to hold it; Tulitine stifled a cry of pain.
‘Yggur,’ Malien said sharply, ‘if you can’t stand up, sit down.’
After finding his balance with an effort, he wiped cold sweat off his brow. ‘It doesn’t hurt as much as the last portal; I think I can manage it.’ He looked around. ‘We’re here.’
‘Aachan, beloved Aachan.’ Malien took a deep, shuddery breath and walked away so light-footedly that she appeared to be bouncing.
‘It’s more comfortable here,’ said Tulitine. ‘My bones hardly ache at all.’
‘I too feel a little stronger,’ said Yggur.
As Maelys’s eyes adjusted to the light, she saw that the plain was a congealed lava flow, its surface dark, ropy and twisted. The rock was cold beneath her feet, and puddles of water lay here and there, while further on, yellow vapour drifted up from crevices.
A stone’s throw to her right a number of large structures, half buried in the lava, looked like reflective metal bubbles. Some were singles, others grouped in clusters, and several were encircled by platforms like planetary rings.
‘Are they houses?’ Maelys wondered, for she had never seen any buildings remotely like them.
‘They were, before the lava flowed,’ said Yggur. ‘The Aachim are brilliant architects, builders and artists, and everything they make is beautiful, but different, for they cannot bear to build to the same design twice.’
She sniffed the air which, though pungent, seemed perfectly breathable. ‘Do you think the ones who came to our world at the end of the lyrinx war lied about A
achan being destroyed?’
He shook his head. ‘The Aachim love their world with a depth and a passion we cannot understand, because the Charon took it from them and held it for thousands of years. When they fled through their portal to Santhenar, maybe thirteen years ago, this world was almost uninhabitable.’
Malien came back, breathing deeply in the chill air, and her cheeks were moist.
‘I was born on Santhenar,’ she said as softly as a sigh, ‘as were my parents and grandparents, yet the longing for Aachan is etched into our very bones. Every Aachim dreams of making pilgrimage to our home world, though I never thought I would.’
‘Why not?’ said Maelys.
‘Crossing from one world to another has rarely been possible, and it would not be possible now, I suspect, had Stilkeen not allowed it.’ Malien rotated in a circle, studying the sawtooth horizon, her chest heaving and her grey-green eyes shining. ‘After Yggur destroyed the construct two centuries ago, and the Way between the Worlds was lost, I thought we were destined to be forever exiles. Even then,’ she mused, as if looking back at that distant time, ‘the volcanoes were erupting out of control.’
‘Are they finished now?’
‘There’s no way of knowing. This country is high up and may have been spared the worst, but much of Aachan’s low-lying land was flooded hundreds of spans deep in lava. It must have been a desperate time.’
‘It’s a grim-looking world,’ said Maelys without thinking.
‘It must seem so to you, but we love it more than our lives.’ Malien looked around wistfully. ‘I wonder if anyone could have survived? In the catacombs life may have struggled on during the worst of the eruptions. For a while, at least …’
‘We came for chthonic fire,’ said Tulitine gently, as if reluctant to bring Malien back to reality, ‘and we don’t have long to find it. Where might it have survived?’
‘Possibly in association with molten lava, if chthonic fire caused the eruptions,’ said Malien.
‘If it is, it’ll be deuced hard to get to,’ said Yggur.
‘The caduceus might know where to look for it,’ said Tulitine.
‘If it’s that easy,’ said Maelys, ‘why doesn’t Stilkeen find the fire itself?’
‘It can’t,’ said Yggur. ‘When chthonic fire bound Stilkeen’s physical and spirit aspects together it could roam the universe at will, but once severed from those spirit aspects – the revenants now trapped in the shadow realm – the physical worlds became excruciatingly painful for it. You saw, in that brief appearance before Stilkeen snatched Jal-Nish, how much it was suffering. To search our world, or this one, would be impossible.’
‘That has to be why it left the caduceus for us,’ added Tulitine. ‘That’s why it’s manipulating us, and why Stilkeen made its proclamation to the whole world – so someone, somewhere, might do what it could not.’
‘What if you gave the caduceus its head?’ said Maelys.
‘Yes, that’s the answer! Create a portal, Yggur, but instead of thinking of the destination, think about what you want to find there. Can you make another?’
‘I should be able to. The aftersickness isn’t as bad here – at least, so far. Put your hands on the shaft.’
They did so, and were whirled away to the top of a range of volcanic hills whose tops were as jagged as broken glass, where the brittle lava had shattered leaving a series of steep little peaks. The ground fell away on all sides into sheer ravines, and in the base of one, far below, Maelys saw a broad river of red-hot lava. On its surface, at the centre, several bright worms of white fire writhed.
‘There it is,’ she said, thinking that it seemed a little too easy.
‘We can’t climb down there,’ said Yggur. ‘The rock would cut our hands and boots to pieces, and the merest slip would be fatal.’
‘Can’t you make a portal to the fire?’ said Maelys.
‘Onto molten lava?’ Yggur studied the flow, frowning and shaking his head. ‘The white fire is right in the middle and we can’t get to it. I’ll try again.’
This time they ended up on a dark, undulating plateau with a great canyon snaking across it, and brooks and rills tumbling over its sheer sides. There were patches of wiry grey scrub on the plateau, swathes of tough blue grass and flat clumps of blue-black luminous flowers like six-petalled daisies.
They walked to the edge of the canyon, the blue grass springy beneath their boots, and looked over. The sun was almost on the horizon here, the canyon lay in shadow and its bottom was dizzyingly far below.
More luminous plants sprouted from the canyon walls; some were like toadstools, others resembled the growths on fallen logs, and they came in an extraordinary variety of shapes and colours.
‘I don’t see any white fire,’ said Maelys, her confidence fading.
‘Keep looking,’ said Yggur tiredly. ‘I’m sure the caduceus didn’t bring us here for nothing.’
‘What’s that?’ said Tulitine, leaning over the rim of the canyon. ‘It’s glowing.’
Maelys went down on her hands and knees. ‘Just sap, trickling out of the stalk of one of those luminous toadstools. Besides, it’s yellow.’
‘Luminous plants and fungi are common here,’ said Malien. ‘In olden times, the roots of that black daisy were used by seers to follow the paths of the future, not that it did them any good.’ She laughed mirthlessly. ‘We Aachim have never had trouble seeing into our futures – only in deciding on any course of action.’
She crouched beside Maelys and looked down. ‘The juice of those toadstools gives a good light for reading or fine work,’ she went on. ‘Unfortunately it only lasts a few hours.’
Maelys reached down with her knife and scraped off some juice. ‘It might come in handy after sunset.’
‘We’d better keep looking,’ said Malien. ‘Tomorrow is the fifteenth day. It’ll be dark here soon, but if you take us west, we’ll still be in daylight –’
Yggur was shaking his head. ‘I can’t do any more today, or I’ll have nothing left to get us home. Where would be the best place to camp?’
‘In the canyon, on a ledge or in a cave, if we can find one. Predators roam the high plains at night and they’re very quick.’
‘Would a fire keep them away?’ said Maelys, scanning the darkening plateau.
‘It would help. I’ll see if I can find some dead bushes. Look for a camp site.’
Not far below the canyon’s rim they found a narrow ledge running down to a broader one, and at its back the wall had a deep indentation, which, if not quite a cave, could be defended – at least from small predators.
The light faded, and here and there along the canyon wall trickles of toadstool sap began to glow like necklaces of pale yellow jewels. Malien appeared, dragging a couple of dead wire-bushes, and made a small fire. After dinner, Yggur, who was silent and exhausted, lay in his blankets at the back of the indentation and Tulitine joined him.
Malien sighed. ‘Aachan, Aachan.’
This world was mentioned in a number of the dark stories Maelys had been told as a little girl, but it was an alien place to her; she could never be at home here. She shivered and tried to think of a cheerful tale, but her thoughts kept going back to the Tale of the Mirror, and the two people whose story it had been.
‘Did you know them well?’ she said absently.
‘Know whom?’ said Malien.
‘Sorry. I was thinking about the Time of the Mirror, and Karan Kin-Slayer and Llian –’
‘Don’t call them that!’ snapped Malien. ‘Yes, I knew them both very well. And I don’t want to talk about them.’
‘Sorry,’ Maelys muttered. Yggur and Lilis had reacted in much the same way when the two names had been mentioned. The betrayal must have been a dreadful one, yet, the more Maelys heard about Karan, the more she wanted to know about her.
They sat in silence for a long time. In the distance, some native creature let out a whistling shriek.
Maelys jumped, thinking that it had met a v
iolent end. ‘What was that?’
‘Perhaps a flightsinger,’ said Malien. ‘A small night bird, calling to its mate.’
‘Oh.’
From above, there came a long, vibrating howl that echoed off the canyon walls. ‘And that?’
‘A gruvellor, I’d say – a predator like a wolverine, only larger and faster.’
Maelys put her back against the wall and took hold of the handle of her knife. ‘How large? How fast?’
‘Enough to take down a human by itself, should one carelessly wander into its territory – and should the bigger predators allow it.’
She swallowed. ‘Are we in its territory?’
‘Of course. If it hasn’t already scented us, it soon will.’
‘And then?’
Malien shrugged. She was standing near the edge, staring down the canyon. Maelys remained behind the fire, as far away from the brink as possible, for the sheer drop unnerved her and it would be easy to go over in the darkness.
Malien said abruptly, ‘I’m going for a walk. I’ll be back for my watch.’
‘But, you can’t go up there …’ Maelys didn’t want to be left alone – at least, effectively alone.
‘I know how to deal with them, Maelys. Here in the land of my ancestors, my Art is powerful. In any case, I require little sleep, and I can’t bear to waste the few hours I will ever have on Aachan,’ she said wistfully. ‘I would brave any predator for a little more time here.’
Moved by Malien’s passion for her world, Maelys said impulsively, ‘I’ll take your watch. Stay out all night if you like.’
‘Thank you. That’s most generous – I know how afraid you are. I’ll be back before dawn.’
Maelys wouldn’t have gone up onto the plateau in the dark for anything. ‘What if something happens and you don’t come back?’
‘Then you must leave without me.’
‘We can’t do that!’ Maelys whispered.
‘Why not? I’m near the end of my days, and my life can be set at naught compared to the fate of a world.’ Malien headed away along the ledge and was lost to the darkness.
