by Ian Irvine
‘When we reach the cellar, she’ll cut your head open like this loaf.’ Tinyhead opened his mouth to take a bite.
‘Who’s she?’
Tali’s memories of the masked woman who had killed her mother were lost, save for her icy contempt. She had despised the Pale, viciously mocked the man who had been her accomplice and stood on Iusia’s chest as though she was rubbish.
Tinyhead froze for a second, mouth open, and a muscle on his jaw twitched. He tried to smile but it failed. ‘A traitor to her own people,’ he gasped.
‘Just like you, then.’
She had gone too far. Tinyhead dragged her upright by her bound hands and clubbed a fist. His misshapen face had gone purple; his whole body shook. With a visible effort he withheld the blow and shoved her backwards onto the grass.
‘You think I’ve suffered all this for gold?’ he spat. ‘For the enemy’s filthy coin?’
She tried to calm her galloping heart. His outrage was genuine. She had been wrong about Tinyhead all along, and it changed everything. Clearly, she had mortally insulted him by comparing him to the woman who had killed her mother. But if he wasn’t acting out of greed, or some deep seated hatred of the Pale, what did move him?
‘Why do you do it?’ she said softly. She needed to know. She had to understand him.
For the first time, he met her eyes. ‘I love my country. I was chosen. I serve.’
He took a huge bite from the loaf, through the cavity filled with glorn, then chewed twice and swallowed. Had he eaten the Purple Pixie? How long would it take to work? She found it hard to breathe. Would it work on a Cythonian?
‘Who do you serve?’ said Tali.
It was the vital question. If he wasn’t betraying Pale for money, if he was following some Cythonian’s secret orders, then whose? And why did that person require him to lead the women of Tali’s family to a distant cellar, to be killed in a particular way by that evil, masked woman — a Hightspaller and an enemy? It made no sense. Why not kill them in Cython? Why involve the enemy at all?
Could the women of her family pose a threat to someone in Cython, a threat most safely eliminated by having them killed by the enemy? It seemed far fetched; much simpler to kill the mother and her little daughter, thus eliminating the threat forever. Why allow each daughter to grow up and have another daughter?
Tinyhead squatted and attacked the rest of the loaf. His bloodshot eyes were on her mouth again. He was definitely afraid of something about her. Her gift?
Tali attacked the problem from another direction. What if the women of her house were not a threat? What if there was something valuable in them — some promise that had to mature: their magery, perhaps? But if so, why didn’t the Cythonians take it for themselves? Why hand it to an enemy? Unless, she thought with a sudden chill, there was something wrong with this unknown gift in her family …
Her stomach began to throb. What if there was something poisoned inside her? If she escaped and went home to Hightspall, might she carry that corruption to her own people? But she could not live her life on what ifs. She had to continue with her plan.
Tinyhead swayed and fell backwards, his eyes describing ovals in their sockets. He tried to sit up but fell down again — the Purple Pixie was starting to work. Tali had to get the truth out of him quickly. Once he began to hallucinate she would not be able to trust anything he said.
She checked on the shaft. Orlyk’s reinforcements must arrive any minute, to begin the search for her. She had to be gone by then, because the well-fed, tireless Cythonians would soon run her down. They could not afford to let her warn Hightspall about the coming war.
But first Tali needed the name of the woman who had killed her mother, or the man who had aided her, though they weren’t her ultimate quarry. Iusia had called House vi Torgrist’s enemy he.
And Tinyhead had said, I love my country. I was chosen. I serve. Who did he serve, and why was it such a secret that he would risk his life rather than allow his fellow Cythonians to discover it? It had to be her real enemy.
Voices came from the top of the shaft. The Cythonians were back. Tinyhead began to grunt and gasp. His pupils were so dilated now that his eyes were watering.
Tali bent over him. ‘Who killed my mother?’
‘Lay-lay-lay-’ he gasped, white tongue lolling from his open mouth.
‘Is that the woman’s name? Layla, Ladis, Layyalie?’
‘Lay-’ Tinyhead’s eyes rolled, then focused on somewhere behind her. ‘No!’ he said, trying to scramble away on his back like a four-legged spider. ‘Get away.’
There was nothing behind her — he was beginning to hallucinate. She was almost out of time; forget the woman’s name. Tali took him by the shoulders and whispered, ‘Who do you serve?’
‘The dead — the dead — ’
Tinyhead convulsed so violently that she was knocked aside, then stood up and began to reel about, waving his arms and bellowing incoherently. ‘M — M — Master — ’
Someone shouted, ‘I heard something, over there,’ from the direction of the shaft. Orlyk.
Tali only had seconds to get the name. Still hidden behind the boulders, she said, ‘Who is your master?’
‘Master …’
Tinyhead jerked like a loose-stringed marionette, then his left arm stilled and, moving at a calm purpose at odds with the rest of his uncontrollable body, he drew from his pouch the blue ovoid he’d been toying with earlier. It was glowing again.
‘Master? Help me, Master.’
His hand smashed the ovoid against the right side of his blistered forehead and blue light fled in all directions, leaving a small blue-green blob like thick jelly stuck to his brow. His dilated pupils contracted to pinpoints, swung onto Tali and focused like twin telescopes.
She gasped, for the air had gone so frigid that her lungs crackled with each breath. His eyes had turned an eerie yellow and someone was looking out of them, someone cold as death, patient as time, radiating rage and an implacable determination. The House vi Torgrist’s enemy had found her.
‘The name!’ hissed Tali, praying that the Purple Pixie still had some influence over Tinyhead.
‘Master — is … is — ’
With a boiling hiss, the blob vanished. Smoke rose from a small circle burned deep into Tinyhead’s forehead, then something white and gluey squirted from his left ear. He swayed in a circle but remained on his feet.
A piercing pain stabbed through Tali’s own brow. Her head began to throb like a beating heart and suddenly she felt exposed, naked, vulnerable. Her enemy knew where she was, yet she knew nothing about him.
Behind her, the Cythonians were shouting down the shaft for reinforcements, yelling at Tinyhead, gasping, choking.
Whatever he knew about her enemy, it was lost.
And Tali had but seconds to get away.
CHAPTER 30
Something was very wrong. The scheme the wrythen had fed, nurtured, honed and tweaked for so many centuries, his plan that was in the last but one stage of completion, was sliding off track like a wagon on wet clay. And if the plan failed, all failed, for he had invested everything in it.
The last nuclix — the fifth — was the master, and once he held it his power would rise a thousandfold. He might even get his long-lost body back, might live again rather than merely existing. Everything rested on the master nuclix now. If he lost it, if even the least of Cython’s enemies obtained it, the plan would fail so utterly that it would be better never to have begun it. His people would be driven from their underground refuge and expunged.
He had tried to anticipate every problem and find a solution. Deroe might attempt to break free and add the master nuclix to the others he had stolen, but the wrythen had a plan to stop him and get them back. The Hightspallers who had cut out the other nuclixes might try to take the fifth for themselves, and ruin it. Or sell it to one of their own. He had schemes for those eventualities too.
Of all possible failures, it had not occurred to the
wrythen that his one faithful servant might be outwitted by the miserable slave girl who was the host. The Pale were half-starved, illiterate and contemptible, a beaten race from which all those manifesting the gift for magery had been culled long ago.
The girl hosting the master nuclix should have been as cowed as the others — she should have gone blindly to her doom. Why, then, was the wrythen’s blue signal ovoid shrieking out a warning of imminent betrayal?
He shot towards it and, as he touched the ovoid, saw his servant outside Cython’s sunstone shaft, fifteen miles away. The man was raising his own ovoid to his forehead, crying, ‘Master? Help me, Master.’
Then he smashed it there -
The shockwave of its destruction split the wrythen’s ovoid and tore him to fluttering wisps. His disembodied consciousness did not try to pull himself together — there wasn’t time.
It should not have been possible, but he forced himself along the link formed between the two ovoids, settled into his servant’s addled mind then cut through the hallucinations to look out from his eyes.
And the wrythen’s distant heart-plasm stopped.
The host girl was a slip of a thing, barely out of childhood. She should have had no gift, yet it burnt in her so brightly that he could see the flares wavering all around her. And she was clever, too. Without using her gift, she had beaten his servant. Unease fluttered within him — who was she?
‘Tell me the name!’ she hissed to his servant.
And his servant, all restraint destroyed by the hallucinogenic toadstool, tried to answer. ‘Master — is … is — ’
The wrythen’s name could not be revealed. Though it would throw his plan into utter disarray, he had no choice but to burn through his faithful servant’s brain.
Ah, how it hurt, even worse than the cursed sword. It felt as though a hole had been burnt through the wrythen’s own head from front to back. There were hot needles in his eyes and his vision went redly in and out of focus as though blood was running down his servant’s eyeballs. The slave girl was staring at his servant in horror, her small hands beating the air.
With a supreme effort, the wrythen took command of his smouldering consciousness. Think! Several of his people had gathered by the shaft doors and would soon come after the girl. He could not allow them to catch her — if they killed her, the master nuclix would be ruined and his plans set back by decades. But if they discovered the nuclix and kept her alive until they cut it out and used it, his plan would fail utterly and, in the end, Cython would be destroyed.
His servant’s vision was fading, the man’s tongue flopping uncontrollably from his mouth. The wrythen had to act quickly. His people had to be kept back, no matter the price. He raised his servant’s twitching right arm, reached towards the arched roof over the shaft and directed all the power that remained in him at the keystones.
Stone grated on stone. The bones of the earth groaned and there came a dull rumble as part of the shaft house collapsed, crushing the guards inside, his own people whom he had dedicated his life to protecting.
Look what I have become, he thought bitterly as his consciousness was hurled back to his home cavern. But the girl — what a magnificent creature she was. The fire in her almost equalled his own. A tragedy that one so gifted had to die.
He dragged himself up to the ancestor gallery to confess his folly. His long-dead nerves should not have been capable of feeling pain, yet pain throbbed through each phantom limb and digit.
I have made terrible blunders, he said to the massed faces, and the wrythen bent his head to them. Yesterday I sent the facinore -
You made afacinore? cried Rovena the Wise, her voice shivering. What if it breaks free and turns on our people?
It won’t, the wrythen said uncomfortably.
You can never tell with them. Never!
You sent it where? said Bloody Herrie.
To the matriarchs, ordering them to make war on Hightspall. The first attack will come tonight and I have no means of calling them back.
Send the caitsthe.
It was a long time before the wrythen spoke. Rixium killed it.
You boasted that no man could kill a caitsthe.
I was wrong.
He also hurt you grievously. With that sword, he’s a formidable foe.
He will die.
What else have you done? said Bloody Herrie, icily.
The host girl got out through the sunstone shaft, outwitted my servant and almost forced him to reveal my identity. I had to burn through his brain, and now she will escape into Hightspall, bearing the master nuclix within her. If the enemy realises -
They will cut the nuclix from her and use it to control the others, including your own, said Ruris.
Their failing magery will be rejuvenated, said the wrythen. It will take on the power of the land itself and tip the balance against us. To the ruin of all.
The matriarchs’ soldiers will find her, said Ruris.
They must not take her, cried the wrythen. If our people find the master nuclix, it will be worse than the enemy getting it.
You said the Pale were sad, cowed creatures, said Bloody Herrie. You said all their magery was gone. How did this girl come to be so strong, so bold?
I don’t know.
What will she do next?
I cannot say …
But you’re afraid.
He did not reply. He wanted to plunge through the floor.
Order the matriarchs to take the girl, but leave her untouched for you, said Rovena.
I have no way to contact them.
Then write another page to the Solaces and transmit it.
I have no alkoyl.
The ghostly ancestors consulted among themselves, then Bloody Herrie said, Can you take command of Rixium?
Not until he’s near the heatstone in his own chambers, said the wrythen.
What about his spell-casting friend, Tobry? You went close to possessing him, did you not?
I … might be able to reach him, though he will be difficult to control.
Do it. Have him find the girl and bring her here.
The master nuclix may not be brought here in a host who has the gift of magery.
A tiny gift, surely. Untutored, unpractised -
Nuclixes call to each other, said the wrythen. The master nuclix might attempt to command the one I hold, and the girl’s magery could be so different to my own that I might not be able to stop it. There is only one safe way. The girl must be taken to the cellar — our healing temple of olden times — and the nuclix cut from her by a Hightspaller under my command. One who lacks even a whisper of magery.
It will not be easy to get her there through a land at war, said Ruris.
You must. If you fail, all fails, said Bloody Herrie.
CHAPTER 31
The sky was visible through Tinyhead’s skull.
A hole the diameter of a thick wire had been burnt through his head from front to back, like a hole burnt through a plank with a red-hot poker. He swayed on his feet, his tongue flap-flopping like a spotted eel. A tendril of smoke drifted from the back of his head and white gloop continued oozing from his right ear, but the greater horror was that he was still alive.
Pain was shrieking through Tali’s temples and her face felt as though it was aflame. Was her enemy trying to attack her the same way? And if he could reach her from his unknown hiding place, was there any point running?
She had to. His power over her was uncertain, but the Cythonians milling in the shaft entrance were an immediate threat. She had to run now. But Tali could not move; her strained thigh muscles had locked in cramp.
Healing charm, healing charm. She massaged the muscles, subvocal-ising the charm, and the cramp eased, though the healing was far more draining than usual and would not last. The white torrent that had killed Banj had drained her to the marrow, and the damage from carrying the sunstone went too deep.
Tinyhead’s arm swung out, his fingers pointed towards the shaft house
and one side collapsed on the guards inside. She looked sideways at his eyes. They were empty now, the yellow and the presence gone.
Pulling her orange hat well down, she took his knife and hobbled diagonally up the slope to a sheep-shaped outcrop near the rim of the valley. Crouched behind it, she sawed through the strap binding her wrists and tried to make sense of the images burned into her consciousness.
She’d learned a clue to the killers — Lay, part of a woman’s name — and had been close to discovering her enemy’s name as well, the man Tinyhead called Master. She would have succeeded had not Tinyhead, a Cythonian she had believed to be beneath contempt, called on his master to sacrifice him rather than be forced to reveal the name. And if so contemptible a man could reveal unexpected nobility, what did that say about -
‘Get after the slave,’ Orlyk yelled.
Tali peeped through the longer grass beside her rock as Orlyk and four others rounded the cluster of boulders and stopped, staring at Tinyhead. He was still lurching aimlessly, white clots quivering on his shoulders.
Orlyk doubled over and threw up into the grass. Tali ducked down and worked the charm on her churning belly but the icy sickness did not abate. The Cythonians would also blame her for the attack on Tinyhead. It might make them more cautious but they could not allow her to get away. If they were unable to take her back, their archers would shoot her down.
Orlyk ran up to the steep rim of the basin, looking all around. Tali shrank into the grass. If Orlyk saw Rannilt she would kill her on sight.
Orlyk returned to the boulders and issued orders. Two guards took Tinyhead by the arms, walked him to the broken shaft doors and inside. Orlyk followed. The remaining two guards, who were armed with Living Blades, kept watch. Tali could hear the keening of the thirsty blades.
She wriggled up a shallow fold towards the rim of the bowl, which here rose steep and bare. After making sure the guards weren’t looking her way, she wriggled across several yards of broken rock to the other side and looked out.
As the vastness of the Seethings opened out before her, both ground and sky began to seesaw. Chills ran down her arms and her heartbeat accelerated. She wrenched the hat brim down at front and sides, fighting the irrational dread. But she had to be able to see, had to know where to go.
