by Ian Irvine
When Jal-Nish looked up, Nish wished he had put the mask back on, for he could not come to terms with the baby-smooth skin on the right side of his father’s face, nor the quicksilver flicker in the empty eye socket.
‘I hoped you would come, Son. We have had –’
Nish’s palms were sodden. Again he wiped them, then met his father’s eye. ‘What do you want?’
Jal-Nish’s face hardened, but he forced a smile and slowly it broadened and became genuine. ‘At last you’re growing more like me.’
‘I’m nothing like you,’ Nish grated. ‘Get on with it.’
‘All right. I need your help.’
‘Beg for it, then.’
Jal-Nish ignored that, with an effort. ‘My plan to master the tears and become a being – a true god, if you like – is thwarted by one obstacle. I can’t fully understand the tears until I know how they were created, but only two people know precisely what happened in the tar cavern in Snizort before the node exploded: Flydd and Irisis –’
‘And Ullii,’ Nish said coldly, for that strange, troubled child-woman had once fallen in love with him, a love he had not been able to return, and he could not forget that it had cost her her life.
‘Ullii would not have understood,’ Jal-Nish said dismissively, ‘even if she had been paying attention. And Flydd will never tell me.’
‘Neither will Irisis, and you know it. She was prepared to die for her principles; how can you hope to compel her from beyond the grave?’
‘I can’t,’ said Jal-Nish. ‘I have many failings, Son, but misreading people is not one of them.’ He thought for a moment, then said softly, ‘But if you asked it of Irisis, she might tell you out of the love she holds for you.’
‘If there’s one thing I know about the dead, they see more clearly than the living, and Irisis always saw through you.’
‘I can bring her back, Cryl-Nish. I would do that for you –’
The temptation so burned Nish that he had to use rage to fight it. ‘Don’t lie to me, you stinking, maggot-eaten mongrel! You don’t give a damn about me, and never have. The only thing you care about is your obscene obsession with power, and what for? What has it ever given you?’
‘You’ll never understand,’ Jal-Nish said scornfully. ‘You’re truly pitiful, Nish. Power is its own reward, and the most seductive of all life’s pleasures.’
‘Only an impotent man would say that,’ said Nish pointedly. ‘I prefer my pleasures a trifle more physical; more real.’
‘I’m sure you do,’ said Jal-Nish. ‘You always were shallow, superficial, and common. Do you want to see her, or not?’
Nish’s throat seemed to have swollen, and for several breaths he had to fight for air. ‘I want to see her.’
Raising Irisis seemed to take an eternity. He watched, barely able to breathe, while Jal-Nish stroked the surface of Gatherer in one motion after another, teasing it into patterns and reading them, then shaking his head and dissolving the patterns back into an amorphous glister and starting again.
‘She will need clothing,’ Nish said. Nakedness had not bothered Irisis while she was alive, but he could not bear the thought of her coming out that way before his vile, sneering father.
‘I have already laid garments to hand.’
Finally Jal-Nish put his hand deep into Reaper, drew it back to Gatherer, and Nish heard something stir on the other side of the dusty curtain. On the day his ten-year sentence in Mazurhize had been up, Jal-Nish had drawn back that very curtain to show him Irisis’s body, and forced him to relive her death, over and again.
A sharp pain grew in the centre of his chest and a hot flush ran up his throat until his face glowed. What was the matter with him? He was blushing like a schoolboy.
Her heart gave a slow thump, and another; Nish felt the air being drawn all the way down her dry throat and into lungs that strained to expand after not knowing air in ten years. She swayed, suffering a momentary dizziness, and he felt that too, as if his father had linked him to Irisis in some way; he also felt her knees wobble as she took a step, and for a second Nish wasn’t sure that they would bear her weight.
‘Leave us, Father!’
Jal-Nish nodded and went across the floor of the ninth level, out of sight. As he did, the iron pedestal faded, and the tears with it. He was taking no chances.
The lid of the coffin whispered open, silk rustled, and Nish heard her bare feet on the floor. His mouth went dry. The curtain was pulled back and tears prickled his eyes, for Irisis stood there, alive!
Or at least, restored to life.
He felt an overpowering urge to run and sweep her into his arms, but held back. Apart from a slight pallor, and a faint blueness of the lips that was already changing to pink, she looked just as she had done the moment before she died. Even the thin seam around her throat was gone … no, not gone completely, though it had faded to the faintest, thread-like scar. No doubt Jal-Nish had left it there deliberately, as a reminder to them both that he had killed her, and then raised her again.
Irisis looked at Nish, did not seem to recognise him, then her eyes widened.
‘Poor Nish,’ she said in the deep, throaty voice that had always sent a thrill up his spine. ‘You’ve aged shockingly. What you must have been through.’
It had not occurred to him that he would look so different. Most of the time he felt like a young man – well, youngish – though he’d never regained all the flesh he’d lost in prison, his hair had thinned at the front, and he bore many recent bruises and battle scars.
‘It’s been ten years, and nearly another half,’ he said. ‘Do you know, in the shadow realm, what goes on in the real world?’
‘The shadow realm is my real world,’ Irisis said quietly. ‘Yet, should one take the trouble, it is possible to see a little of what is happening on Santhenar. As time goes on, however, it becomes harder to understand why you mortals do the things you do.’
Did she mean that she could have watched him from the shadow realm, but had not bothered? Did she no longer care? This wasn’t going at all the way Nish had expected. ‘You look as beautiful as ever,’ said Nish. ‘Oh, Irisis –’
‘Why should I not? My body has been preserved, frozen in time by your father’s vile Arts.’
‘But you’re alive again? You really have come back?’
‘I’ve been dragged back from death, forced into the body I was torn from long ago, and the spark of life so violently extinguished has been relit. Yes, I’m alive, but I’m not the Irisis you knew, any more than you’re the Nish you were when I died. Why have you brought me here?’
Maelys was struggling down the steep, broken face of the pit in the darkness, terrified that she was already too late, when she heard someone not far behind. Jal-Nish must have sent the Imperial Guard to do what they had failed to do last time.
Drawing her knife, she moved behind a slab of rock, though if he was directing the attack with Gatherer he could probably see her wherever she tried to hide. She peered around the side; a shadow was creeping down, following her path. She raised the knife, but lowered it again when he vanished. Where was he? Had he sensed she was here?
‘Maelys, what the blazes are you doing?’
On recognising Flydd’s voice, her knees went weak with relief. ‘I’m looking after Nish,’ she snapped. ‘Someone’s got to.’
‘What are you talking about?’ he said irritably.
‘You’re planning to destroy the tears, even if that destroys Nish at the same time.’
Pulling her close, he hissed in her ear. ‘You little fool, I said that in case Jal-Nish’s loop-listeners had picked us up. Do you really think I’ve encouraged, cajoled and driven Nish all this way, all this time, only to abandon him now? Besides, we haven’t worked out how to destroy the tears. We’ve no idea what their antithesis is.’
Maelys started, but fortunately the darkness concealed it. She had never been good at keeping secrets, while Flydd had been an expert at extracting them. Had he b
een able to see her face, he would have known that she was holding something back.
And I’m not going to tell you, she thought. To distract him, she said, ‘I’m going to Nish,’ and headed down the slope.
‘What do you expect to do when you get there?’ he said conversationally as he followed. ‘Save him from himself?’
‘I don’t know,’ she muttered. ‘But I’m still going and you can’t stop me.’
‘I can,’ Flydd said equably. ‘But I’m not planning to.’
They were almost to the bottom now. The moon had come out and there was just enough reflected light from the palace for them to pick their way across the broken rock partly filling the watery moat. It took ages to reach the steps surrounding the palace, and Maelys was afraid they were already too late.
‘How long would it take?’ she said as she clambered onto the once-magnificent promenade, now fractured and with its tilted paving stones covered in gravel and grit, making it impossible to move quietly.
‘To do what?’
‘Raise Irisis from the dead.’
‘How would I know?’ Flydd said. ‘I’m no necromancer. Besides, as far as I know, it has never been done.’
‘Keep your voice down. The guards –’
‘He knows we’re coming, Maelys.’
‘He knows?’ she whispered.
‘Of course. Jal-Nish is a show-off; he wants us there so we can all see how brilliant he is. Surely you didn’t think you could sneak in undetected?’
‘Oh!’ she said, feeling like a foolish little girl. ‘Then what are we going to do?’
‘We’ll have to make it up as we go along.’
They went inside, and up the floors one by one, though Maelys saw no one until they were climbing the dusty stair to the ninth level. Two Imperial Guardsmen stood at the top, the pair who had been going to kill her at the feast. She froze on the steps, too afraid to move, but Flydd took her arm and the guards silently stepped aside to let them enter.
‘Jal-Nish no longer has any fear of us,’ said Flydd. ‘That’s bad.’
As they moved across the polished floor, the dust squeaked beneath their feet. Maelys could hardly breathe; there was a swelling in her throat the size of a lemon and she felt a sharp pain in the region of her heart.
They turned around a column together, and stopped, staring.
‘He’s done it,’ said Flydd in a strangled voice. ‘I never thought it was possible, but Jal-Nish has brought her back.’
Nish was about thirty paces away, looking up at a tall, beautiful woman who had the most extraordinary yellow hair. He appeared to be straining forwards, and there was an odd, yearning expression on his face. Irisis was standing side-on and Maelys could not read anything from her features, but she did not need to.
‘How can I compete with that?’ she muttered, her small shoulders slumping.
‘I wasn’t aware that you wanted to,’ Flydd murmured.
‘Neither was I until Jal-Nish mentioned raising Irisis,’ said Maelys. ‘I loved Nish once, after we fled from Mazurhize last autumn, but that was just a silly, girlish hero-worship. And after the way he treated me when he was playing at being the Deliverer, I almost hated him for a while. But since we met again at the Range of Ruin he’s been really thoughtful and kind, and brave and true, and I knew I was seeing the real Nish at last. And, silly girl that I am, I even imagined …’
‘But you can’t possibly compete with the risen dead,’ said Flydd, going ahead.
‘No, I can’t.’ Maelys followed, keeping behind him, for she did not want to be seen. She felt sure that Irisis would judge her and find her wanting. ‘I’m still going to save him, though.’
‘I would expect no less of a true friend,’ he said over his shoulder.
Irisis turned suddenly, smiled and reached out to Flydd. ‘Xervish!’ She took a step towards him, stopped, frowning, but came on again. ‘What happened to your renewed body?’
Maelys tried to hide behind him and knew it wouldn’t work, since her hips were considerably wider than his scrawny frame.
‘It never suited me,’ said Flydd, laughing in delight, ‘so I went back to the old one.’ He clasped her hands in his.
‘No, it never did,’ said Irisis.
‘I thought you said it was too much trouble to look back to Santhenar?’ muttered Nish, somewhat piqued.
‘I didn’t say that,’ said Irisis, her smile fading. ‘I merely allowed you to think it.’ She turned back to Flydd and it flickered on again. ‘You’re not quite the old Flydd,’ she said, looking him up and down. ‘Poor Nish has aged fifteen years in ten, while you’ve taken five years off. You look very well, old friend.’
‘I feel it. I’m fully restored to the man I was when we first met.’
‘Fully?’ she said with a roguish smile.
‘Oh yes.’
‘Then I’m glad.’ She stepped around him and approached Maelys, who had no idea what to say or do. ‘Hello, Maelys. I’m so pleased to meet you at last.’ Irisis reached out and took her hands.
She seemed even taller and more beautiful close up, and yet again Maelys found herself flushing. ‘What do you mean, at last?’
‘I’ve been watching you ever since you saved Nish last autumn. You’ll do perfectly.’
Before Maelys could ask what she meant, Jal-Nish appeared fifty or sixty paces off, on the far side of the ninth level. As he came across, the pedestal reappeared, with the tears standing on it.
Flydd had seen them too; Maelys could tell by the slight stiffening of his posture, and the gleam in his eyes that he could not entirely conceal. Did he still yearn for them the way Nish yearned for Irisis? Was he obsessed by the ultimate power they could give him?
‘You can finish the reunions afterwards,’ said Jal-Nish, striding towards them, his replaced arm hanging limp, the other swinging vigorously and wafting out that faint corpse smell. ‘Irisis Stirm, I brought you back for a reason, and I’m sure Nish has told you what it is.’
Maelys moved well back, for she could not bear to be near Jal-Nish.
‘You want to know what happened at the node-drainer,’ said Irisis, ‘to cause the Snizort node to explode in such a way as to create your Profane Tears.’
‘That’s right,’ Jal-Nish said eagerly.
‘And you’re terrified that, when Tiaan made all the nodes explode at the end of the war, one or two of them might also have produced nihilium tears.’
‘I’m not terrified –’
‘Of course you are,’ said Irisis, and laughed scornfully. ‘You never had it in you to be a great mancer, Jal-Nish, and despite all your boasting, you still aren’t one. You owe everything you have to the tears and you’re terrified that, if another set should be found, a truly great mancer like Flydd would soon cast you down and undo everything you’ve achieved with them.’
‘All right!’ he snapped. ‘You’ve had your fun. Tell me what happened at the Snizort node.’
‘No,’ said Irisis.
‘What?’ he roared. The old side of his face crinkled up, while the restored side barely moved.
‘I’m not going to tell you,’ said Irisis.
‘But … but that was the price,’ he cried, flustered, then his face hardened. ‘If you don’t tell me, I’ll send you back to the shadow realm.’
FIFTY-FOUR
Maelys clenched her fists helplessly. Irisis would have to tell him now.
‘Good,’ said Irisis. ‘I want to go back.’
Jal-Nish stared at her in incomprehension. ‘But … you can’t. No one chooses death over life.’
‘I do.’ She laughed in his face. ‘How does it feel to be as powerless as the least of your subjects, God-Emperor? There’s absolutely nothing you can do to compel me.’
‘I could kill Cryl-Nish,’ said Jal-Nish.
‘Then we’ll be together in the shadow realm,’ said Irisis, and momentarily such a wistful look crossed her beautiful face that Maelys felt tears form in her own eyes. It was only right th
at they should be reunited, and yet it felt so wrong. ‘But not even you could kill your only son.’
‘I could kill Flydd, though,’ said Jal-Nish.
Flydd took a small step closer to Jal-Nish.
‘Go ahead,’ said Irisis, not smiling now, ‘if killing is your only answer. Flydd’s had a good life, and he’ll be wonderful company for me in the shadow realm. Kill him or not, I’m not telling you what you want.’
‘Then I’ll kill Maelys,’ snarled Jal-Nish.
‘Why should she have your son, if I can’t?’ said Irisis. She moved to her left, and Jal-Nish’s eyes followed her, but Maelys noticed her make a tiny, wiggling gesture of her fingers to Flydd.
He sprang, punched Jal-Nish in the face, knocking him down, and ran for the tears. Jerking them from their pedestal by their chain, he slid his gnarled fingers above the roiling surfaces of Gatherer and Reaper.
‘Xervish!’ Maelys cried. ‘The tears are their own antithesis. If you crush them together, I think they’ll annihilate each other …’ But how was he supposed to do that without killing himself and everyone else? Or was that the only solution?
Jal-Nish rolled over, spat out blood and a broken tooth, and snapped his fingers. The surface of Reaper seethed and bubbled; Flydd’s hand began to smoke and he was hurled ten spans across the floor, where he lay on his back, rolling from side to side and holding his head.
‘You’ve always been predictable, Flydd,’ said Jal-Nish, ‘and it was worth a tooth to have you take the tears, because I’d set my trap earlier. The moment you touched Gatherer, it drew from you the memories of what you did and saw and felt in Snizort and, now I have them, I will finally understand the tears.’
He went to the pedestal, laid his good hand upon Gatherer, and stood for a minute or two, head down.
‘I see it,’ he said. ‘The process that created the tears was unique and none of the other exploded nodes would have reacted that way. There are no other tears on Santhenar. No one can hope to match my power.’
