by Ian Irvine
“Don’t say that!” Rannilt howled. “It’s not true. You saved my life. I’d never hurt you. Never, ever, ever!”
Tali tried again. “Look, I do understand, but — ”
“No, no, no! Why are you bein’ so horrible?”
Rannilt collapsed on her bunk, weeping so piteously that Tali said no more.
The child had another nightmare that night, though the first Tali knew of it was when Rannilt’s teeth sank into her wrist. She tried to push Rannilt away but she scrambled onto Tali’s chest, pressing her down with two bony knees and holding her wrist with both hands while she lapped at her blood with quiet, clinging desperation. Tali whacked at her feebly, then Rannilt toppled off onto her own bunk and was instantly asleep.
Tali did not think she would ever dare sleep again. Her wrist was aching, the top of her head throbbing and the pearl was again beating like a frantic heart. For a few horrified seconds she thought the loss of blood was going to drive her into reliving Sulien’s murder again.
The feeling passed but the terror did not. What if Lyf was trying to get at her through Rannilt?
Tali sat up all the following night, determined to repulse Rannilt when next she came to her veins, but the girl had no nightmares and slept soundly all night. Tali snatched what sleep she could during the day after that. She felt sure she was safe in daytime. Safe from her, at least, but not from the chancellor. What would he do next time? She could not face that nightmare again.
“You’re looking mighty well today, Rannilt,” said Kroni, the clock attendant, who had his hands in the bowels of the clock mechanism again. “It must be good to be back with your old friend, Grizel.”
“No, it’s the diet,” Tali said sourly.
The old man glanced at her. “Doesn’t seem to be doing you any good.”
“Every bloodsucker in the fortress is using me. Most of all, the chancellor.”
“I’m sure he’s doing his best for Hightspall,” said Kroni.
“There is no Hightspall!” she snapped. “The enemy is tearing down the best of it and a hundred vultures are making civil war over the rest.”
“How would you know that,” he said in a steely voice, “when you’re confined to your cell with no visitors?”
“Just a guess.” Tali turned away, her heart beating erratically. She knew because the chancellor had confided in her. Why, why had she blurted it out to his spy?
She lay on her bunk and closed her eyes. Kroni was right about Rannilt, though. Every day she looked stronger; less scrawny and waif-like. The scars on her arms and legs, where the other slave girls had tormented her, were fading and her formerly sallow skin had developed a golden bloom. Healing blood indeed.
And of all the people who had taken her blood, Rannilt was the one Tali did not begrudge. She would have given it to her willingly.
She could not but resent the way it was taken, however.
CHAPTER 14
“Why do you hate me, Grizel?” Rannilt said late that afternoon.
Tali sighed. “I don’t hate you.”
“You seemed to like me, after I saved your life, but you don’t care for me any more. You’re always tryin’ to get away. You want to get rid of me, don’t you?”
The emotional blackmail had been going on for hours, and Tali was fed up with it. “All right! It’s because you’ve turned into a little bloodsucker.”
Rannilt froze. “What are you talkin’ about?”
The Sullen Man’s face appeared at the bars, though he was looking through Tali’s cell, to Lizue’s. Out in the corridor, old Kroni was bowed over part of the water clock mechanism but he was quite still. Spying for the chancellor.
“I tried to tell you the other day.” Tali thrust her wrist in the child’s face. “This! You’re like a vampire bat — no, like a leech.”
Rannilt blanched. “I take your blood?”
“I was too weak to stop you. And… and I thought, why shouldn’t you have it, if it would make you better? But you’re feeding on me like a horrible little leech, and I can’t bear it.”
“I thought we were friends,” whispered Rannilt. “But I’m a horrible little leech.”
“I shouldn’t have said that,” Tali said hastily. “But Rannilt — ”
“Don’t worry!” the child said stiffly. “I’ll never come near you again.” She dragged her bunk across to the far side of the cell. “Never, ever!”
“Please, come back,” said Tali. “I didn’t mean it like that.”
“If you didn’t mean it, why did you say it?”
Rannilt stalked across to the porthole into Lizue’s cell and began an animated conversation with her. Tali raked her fingers through her hair, knowing there was nothing to be done. She had never met a child with more unwavering determination than Rannilt. Only time could heal the injury — if anything could.
She was pacing away when she realised that Rannilt was telling Lizue a story about their escape, and how determined Tali was to avenge her mother, and her other murdered ancestors. Did Rannilt know that each of them bore an ebony pearl, and that Tali did as well?
“Rannilt?” she said sharply. “Could you come here, please?”
Rannilt gave Tali a look of childish malice, then turned back to Lizue and said in a shrill, raised voice. “It’s my story too and I’ll tell it how I like.”
She began to tell Lizue about Overseer Banj’s attack on Tali in the sunstone shaft leading up from Cython. Tali’s heart nearly stopped — if Kroni told the chancellor that story in all its bloody detail, he would know how powerful Tali’s magery was and must guess where it came from.
She glanced across to the water clock but Kroni had gone. Shaking with relief, Tali slumped on her bunk, then noticed the Sullen Man’s shocked expression. He must be a spy as well.
But then it got worse.
“Then Tali killed Banj with a white blizzard,” Rannilt was saying in her bloodthirsty way. “Burst out of her fingertips, it did, and took his big round head right off and sent it bouncin’ down the steps.”
Tali’s mouth went dry. Rannilt had used her real name.
In an instant, Lizue’s face changed, as if a glamour cast on her had broken. Though she was still remarkably pretty, she no longer looked like a Hightspaller. She had the grey skin and black eyes of a Cythonian.
Lyf must have put the glamour on her before he sent her into Rutherin to try and locate Tali.
Lizue pointed a crystalline rod at Tali. A red beam touched her forehead, stinging it, and she felt the chief magian’s glamour disappear.
“Guards!” cried the Sullen Man, who now looked alert, focused. “Gua — ”
Lizue hurled a glass phial, which smashed on his bars, spattering his face with brown droplets that fizzed and released thin white fumes. He fell out of sight, choking and clawing at his nose and eyes.
Lizue ran the pointed tip of another phial across the tops and bottoms of the twisted bars between her cell and Tali’s. Whatever chymical potion the phial held, it dissolved the metal within seconds. From inside her coat, she withdrew a clear bag and a long, heavy blade, rather like a machete.
Only then did Tali realise her peril. She ran to the front of the cell and clung to the bars. Where were the guards? Where was Kroni?
“Help! I’m being attacked. Help, help!”
Lizue pulled out the eaten-away bars and tossed them on the floor, clang. She went back several steps, ran and dived through the hole, into Tali’s cell.
“What are you doing, Lizue,” cried Rannilt, trying to stop her. “Tali’s my friend. I didn’t mean it. Please, no — ”
Lizue elbowed Rannilt in the nose, driving her backwards onto her bunk. Blood flooded from her nose onto the mattress. Lizue turned to Tali, put down the knife and shook out the clear bag until it could have enveloped a melon. Or a head. It resembled the head bag that a healer in Cython had once used to save the guard Orlyk’s life. This bag wasn’t intended to save a life, though, but to take it.
Tali’s knees were trembling. She did not have the strength for a fight, even a brief one. She struck at Lizue’s eyes, and then her throat. The assassin avoided the blows lazily, almost contemptuously.
Tali drove a blow at Lizue’s midriff; again she avoided it. She knew what Tali intended as soon as she moved, and that could mean only one thing. Lizue must have interrogated Nurse Bet back in Cython, and knew exactly how she had trained Tali in the bare-handed art.
“Stop it, stop it!” wailed Rannilt.
From the corner of an eye Tali saw the child racing at Lizue, her fingers hooked, blood still dripping off her chin. Without looking, Lizue backhanded her halfway across the cell.
A blow to the belly dropped Tali to her knees. In another second, Lizue had whipped the bag over Tali’s head and twisted it around her throat to seal it. Lizue picked up the heavy knife and swung it back. She wasn’t planning to cut the pearl out of Tali here — that would take far too long. She was going to cut Tali’s head off and seal it in the bag with her blood, which would preserve the pearl long enough for it to be extracted elsewhere.
Tali couldn’t get out of the way in time. She was watching the swinging blade when the Sullen Man broke open the door of the cell and slammed it into Lizue’s back. She dropped the knife, but dived for it and swung it at her attacker, wounding him in the shoulder. He drove a punch at her throat. She swayed away and the blow did little damage.
Tali clawed at the head bag. It had been made from the intestines of the Cythonian elephant eel and the membrane was so strong that her short nails made no impression on it. It was tight around her nose and mouth and there was no air inside. If she could not get it off in the next minute she would suffocate.
She forced her fingers in under the tight opening of the bag and tried to stretch it enough to get it over her head. It gave a little, then snapped back — it was immensely strong. Stronger than she was in her weakened state. She tried again, failed again.
Gasping like a stranded fish, she tried to force the membrane into her mouth so she could bite through it. It would not stretch far enough. Her head was spinning. She had only moments of consciousness left.
The Sullen Man leapt at Lizue, feinted, then kicked her legs from under her. She landed hard and groped for the knife. He drew a knife of his own and stabbed her in the left thigh, the blade going in all the way to the bone. She cried out and slumped, the wound gushing blood.
He ran to Tali, who was starting to choke, and tore the clear bag apart.
“Out!” he gasped. “Run upstairs.”
Lizue staggered to her feet, the heavy knife in her hand, and plunged it through the Sullen Man’s chest into his heart. He fell dead without a sound.
Rannilt leapt up, picked up a fallen chair and whacked Lizue across the back with it. She reached out to Tali, her face twisted in anguish. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
Another of those golden bubbles formed at her fingertip, shot across the cell, struck Tali on the forehead and burst there with a hot flare of light. Rannilt bolted out the door and up the steps, screaming for help.
Tali was rubbing her throbbing forehead when she felt her gift rising — rising all the way this time. Lizue staggered towards her, swinging the knife. Tali thrust out her right arm, her fingers pointing towards Lizue’s throat. Lizue froze.
The power was there but it would not come. They stared at one another for a long time, then Lizue smiled and lurched forwards. Tali threw herself through the open cell door and slammed it in Lizue’s face.
Rannilt had disappeared up the steps; Lizue was struggling to get the door open with her bloody hands. Tali looked around. If she remained here, she would die, for she was too weak to fight.
The stairs and the main part of the fortress were to the left, but Rannilt would have alerted the guards up there by now. Tali turned right and was heading down the dimly lit corridor when a rear door opened and Kroni came through, carrying a bucket of water for the water clock. Tali froze for a second, then continued, her face turned away, but he merely nodded and continued past. With the glamour gone, he had not recognised her, but he would soon discover what had happened. She lurched through the door, closed it behind her and ran.
But without food, winter clothing or any knowledge of where she might get help, where was she to run to? The Sullen Man might be dead, but Lizue would come after her. And the chancellor would soon read the signs. The head bag would give her secret away.
Within the hour, he would know she bore the master pearl.
And he would kill her before he allowed the enemy to get it.
CHAPTER 15
“What’s that smell?” said Lyf. He was at the door of his underground temple, formerly the murder cellar beneath Palace Ricinus. After many days of labour all traces of the cellar had been removed and the temple stripped back to its original stonework. “You told me it had been thoroughly scrubbed.”
“Three times it’s been cleaned, Lord King,” said his personal attendant, Moley Gryle, “and the final time I did it myself. When we’re finished, it’s as perfect as we can make it, yet within hours the smell comes back.”
“Where’s it coming from?”
Lyf hobbled inside on his crutches. He could have floated in, or flown, but it would have felt sacrilegious to use the magery of the pearls in such a place. In olden times, the temple had one purpose only — healing. Besides, the pearl magery had been weakening rapidly of late. Had he drawn too much to ensure his fabulous victories? All the more reason to get the master pearl as soon as possible.
Before the Hightspallers had arrived on the First Fleet, this temple had been one of the most sacred places in Cythe, the private temple of the king. Here a succession of kings had worked their king-magery to heal the turbulent and disaster-prone land, as well as those unfortunate people whom ordinary healers could not help. At least, most of them. Some people suffered ailments beyond even the kings’ healing.
But the temple had been debauched by Axil Grandys, who had betrayed the young, naive King Lyf there, hacked off his feet and dragged him away to his death. Curiously, though, Grandys had protected the temple when every other building in the capital city of Lucidand had been torn down, and he had spent the following years in a fruitless attempt to find the secret of king-magery.
“There, Lord King,” said Gryle, pointing.
She ushered him in and across to the centre. Everything had been removed from the former cellar, even the plaster on the walls and the staircase that had spiralled down through the ceiling when it had been the murder cellar. Now it was an empty, ovoid space some forty yards long and twenty-five wide, with a curving ceiling like the top of a skull. A skull with a hole in it, for the staircase opening had not yet been plugged. Lyf wondered if that was the problem.
“This is the spot.” Gryle indicated the large flagstone in front of her.
Lyf measured the cellar with his eyes. “The altar stood here. The table and benches were over there — that’s where the Five Herovians used their foul magery to compel my signature onto the lying charter they used to justify the theft of our country. And here — ” He choked, but collected himself. “Here — see the gash in the stone — this is the place where they held me down while Grandys hacked my feet off with his accursed blade.”
“The sacred stones cannot forget the crime that was committed here,” Gryle said sententiously. “They reek to remind us that we must never forget.”
“I wonder,” said Lyf. “After I’ve completed my morning’s devotions, take up the stones, remove the earth beneath and re-lay them.”
“It will be done.” Gryle went to speak, hesitated for almost a minute, then said, “Lord King, may I raise a matter with you?”
“If you must.”
“Lord King, this is not something that concerns me personally… not deeply, at any rate — but so many of your people are talking about it that I feel I must speak.”
Lyf made an impatient gesture, and she hurried on.
“Ma
ny people are troubled by the way the war is, um… going, Lord King.”
“You may speak candidly, Gryle.”
“Our people want Cythe back, and the enemy punished. But they feel the destruction of every house, every palace, every library and every temple built by the enemy over the past two thousand years is… excessive.”
“It’s what they did to us,” said Lyf, nettled.
“And they’re sickened by all the unnecessary killing.”
“Do you know how many Cythians they put down?” bellowed Lyf, brandishing a fist at her. “Fifty thousand, at least.”
Gryle held her ground, though only with an effort. “Lord King, I do. But that was long ago and we — they — we feel — ”
“You asked to speak, Gryle, and I have heard you.”
“Yes, Lord King. And may I say — ”
“You may not!”
“Lord King?”
“Get out.”
As she was leaving, a courier came running. “Lord King, an urgent message from Lizue, at Rutherin.”
“Yes?”
“The disguised prisoner was the escaped Pale, Tali vi Torgrist. Lizue almost took her head, but one of the chancellor’s spies interfered and the Pale got away. Lizue is injured, though not badly enough to stop her from trying again.”
His severed shinbones began to throb. Could victory be slipping from his grasp already? No, he would not allow it.
“Send gauntlings,” said Lyf. “All we have. Find Tali.”
The courier withdrew. Lyf called for his daily report on the war. An officer he did not recognise came to present it, a slender young man with prematurely white hair. General Hillish was leading the army against Bleddimire, and Lyf had banished General Rochlis, that great hero of the war, to a fortress in the north, for insubordination.
“Who are you?” said Lyf.
“Captain Durling, Lord King.”
“Make it quick, Durling. I’ve much on my mind today.”
Durling bowed. “Caulderon is quiet, Lord King. The people are thoroughly cowed.”
“No signs of insurrection anywhere?”
