by Ian Irvine
“You’re asking the wrong man. Magery isn’t one of my gifts, thankfully.”
“Why thankfully?”
“If I’d had it when I was young, I would have done even more damage.”
“I’m not asking you to use magery.”
“What are you asking?”
“You understand how things work…”
“Some things.” He pursed his weathered lips, puffed his cheeks in and out. “All right — a lot of things. So?”
“Can you tell me where I’m going wrong?”
“I doubt it.”
“Will you try?”
“All I can do is listen and see if I notice something you’ve missed.”
Holm made yet another pot of tea and offered her the first cup. She shook her head.
“Begin,” he said.
She wasn’t sure how to start. Or where. “Magery is forbidden in Cython.”
“It always has been,” said Holm. “Even in old Cythe, before the First Fleet came, magery was forbidden to the people. Using it was an insult to the king.”
“But in Cython, any Pale with the gift are killed out of hand.”
“What, even if they don’t use it?” he said in a deceptively mild voice.
“Yes. Even little children.”
His eye glinted. “Go on.”
She told him about her own developing gift, and how her mother had warned her never to use it. Yet several times, when she was a little girl, it had exploded out of her, wreaking havoc, then it disappeared for years.
“It only happened when I was furiously angry, but I never had any control of it. Then, the night I turned eighteen and came of age — ”
“When was that?”
“Um, I suppose it was five or six weeks ago.”
“So young,” Holm said to himself. “I can hardly remember that far back.”
“That night I started getting dreadful, grinding headaches. I think they’ve got to do with the master pearl maturing.”
She told him how the imploding sunstone in the shaft had seemed to release a block on her magery, temporarily at least. Next, when Banj had attacked, that a golden radiance had streamed out from Rannilt and touched her. Something seemed to burst inside Tali, then the white blizzard had burst from her fingertips to shear Banj’s head off.
“He wasn’t a bad man. Of all the Cythonians I knew, I liked Banj best.” Tali hugged her arms around herself, staring into nothingness. “It was horrible. The sight will live with me all my days.” She rubbed her fingertips. “But I still couldn’t control my gift, or even call it at will.”
She looked hopefully at Holm, hoping he could make sense of it.
He said, “Continue.”
“Later on, I had a theory that breaking a heatstone could release my gift.”
“Did it work?”
“The chancellor gave me a little heatstone to break, when he sent me to the wrythen’s caverns.”
“And?”
“It released a lot of power, but Lyf stole most of it. Then he robbed Rannilt of her gift and after that he was ten times as strong. We were lucky to escape.”
Holm indicated that she should continue.
“In the Abysm I saw power swirling around in vast, complex patterns, too strong for anyone to use.”
“Really? Where did it come from?”
“It was spiralling up from deep in the earth. I also saw little coloured loops and whorls of power in the pattern. I thought they were the key to using my gift — if only I knew how to see them in the real world.
“In the three-way battle in the cellar, Lyf held a loop of power up in front of me,” she concluded, “and I took power from it to defeat Deroe. I thought it was what Mimoy had meant — my enemy teaching me to use magery — ”
“Maybe it was,” said Holm.
“But I haven’t seen those patterns again. I could only see them with the chancellor’s spectible, and it was lost when the palace was attacked.”
“That all?” said Holm.
“Yes.”
She expected him to say something, or question her further, but he merely leaned back and closed his eyes. Occasionally he opened them to take another sip of tea, or replenish his mug. Tali lay down and closed her eyes. Time passed, at least half an hour, and her faint hope began to fade. When it came to her magery, every hope had turned to ashes.
“Heatstone,” he said at last.
Assuming he was referring to the stove, she said nothing. Why had she imagined that Holm could help her?
“What about it?” said Tali.
“Where does it come from?”
“The heatstone mine.”
“How did heatstone get there?”
“I assume it was always there.”
“I don’t think it was there when Cython was established.”
“How would you know?”
“I’ve talked to a lot of people about heatstone,” said Holm. “Such as the Vicini traders who buy and sell it. It was unknown to either side during the first war, so how did it suddenly appear?”
Tali did not reply. It was a good question.
“I think something turned the rock there to heatstone,” Holm continued, “some time after Cython was founded. And later on, the first ebony pearls began to form in the women of your family.”
“Why are you so focused on heatstone, anyway?”
“I think it’s the key to your magery.”
“How can it be? It hurts every time I go near a piece.”
“And so does your magery, and the pearl you host. Doesn’t that tell you that they’re linked in some way?”
“I hadn’t thought of it like that.”
“So! If heatstone is the key, to unlock the lock we have to know how it formed.” He looked up at Tali. “But right now, the important thing is your master pearl — and how heatstone created it.”
Tali jerked upright. “The pearls were created by heatstone?”
“By emanations from heatstone, I’d guess.”
“Then why do pearls only form in my family?”
“Why does a gift for music, or dance, or magery run in some families and not in others?”
“All right, I’ll clutch at the straw. Supposing you’re right, how does it help me?”
“If your magery is blocked in some way, heatstone might liberate it.”
“Are you planning to break one over my head?”
“Not unless you’re more irritating than usual,” he said, smiling.
“If heatstone can liberate my magery, what’s that going to do to me?”
“That would depend on how you use it.”
“Deroe said that ebony pearls were too strong for any host to use safely.”
“He might have been lying; he might have been wrong. It’s a risk you have to take. I can’t advise you.”
“I think I’ll have a cup after all,” said Tali.
He made a fresh pot. She pulled her coat around her and warmed her hands around the mug. It didn’t feel as though they were getting anywhere.
“You might also ask yourself why this matters so much,” said Holm.
“I swore a blood oath to save my people.”
“You mean the Pale?” said Holm.
“Yes.”
“How?”
She might as well tell him. “I’m afraid Lyf wants to get rid of them.”
“Cast them out of Cython, you mean?”
“No — they know too much to be set free.”
“About what?”
“How the enemy think, how Cython’s defences work, where their water and air supplies come from and how they operate, how they grow food underground — the lot!”
“If the chancellor knew all that,” mused Holm, “he’d identify Cython’s weaknesses and find a way to attack it — poison the water supply, for instance. You’re right, Lyf can’t cast them out.”
“And with the place nearly emptied of Cythonians, the Pale are a much greater threat than before. I’m worried, H
olm.”
“Why?”
“I think he’ll order them to be put down.”
“He’s got the best of Hightspall already. Why would he care about protecting Cython?”
“The enemy were almost wiped out in the first war. They were driven out of their homelands and herded into filthy degrado camps, and they swore they’d never allow that to happen again.”
“You mean — ?”
“They’ll never give up Cython. And I’ve often heard them threatening to get rid of the Pale. ‘Come the day when we don’t need your kind any more,’ Orlyk used to say, and I think that day’s nearly here. I think it’s the ending Lyf plans to write in The Consolation of Vengeance.”
“You may be right,” said Holm, “but I don’t see — ”
“If the Pale are facing genocide, I have to fulfil my blood oath. I have to rescue them.”
CHAPTER 35
Holm whistled. “Has it occurred to you that you’re taking on the impossible?”
“Every day,” said Tali. “Every hour! But what option do I have?”
“Was your blood oath that specific? Did you actually swear to go back to Cython and rescue them?”
“I’m not going to weasel out of it.” How she wanted to; Tali knew she wasn’t up to the job.
“Answer the question.”
“No, it wasn’t that specific, but it’s what I have to do. So I’m going to need my magery.”
“Ah, yes,” said Holm. “And all the evidence suggests that emanations from heatstone created the ebony pearls — in you and your ancestors.”
“By itself?” said Tali. “Or did Lyf have something to do with it?”
He must have. She could not bear the thought that her family’s agony had a natural cause. Someone had to be at fault. Someone had to pay.
“But once created,” Holm continued as if she had not spoken, “there’s a tension between these emanations and the pearls. That must be why being near heatstone causes you such pain.”
“I don’t see — ”
“I wonder if that tension might be used to unlock the power of your pearl?”
“How?”
“In a nutshell — ha! — by surrounding your head with it.”
“Wouldn’t that be painful?”
“Agonising,” he said cheerfully. “I’m not sure I could bear to watch.”
“Yet you’re suggesting I do it.”
“I suggest nothing. I advise nothing. You asked for my help. I’m telling you what I think. No more.”
“If our positions were reversed, what would you do?”
“Our positions can’t be reversed.”
“Just answer the damn question,” Tali snapped. “What would you do?”
“You’re a prickly little thing, aren’t you?”
“Especially when ugly old coots call me a little thing.”
He sipped, refilled his cup and drained it. “A few things in life are worth the price one pays for them. Magery isn’t one of them.”
She stared at him, mouth open.
“No more questions,” he said.
“Are you going to help me?”
“Are you asking me to, knowing the likely consequences?”
She licked her lips, which were unaccountably dry. “Yes.”
“Then I’ll do it — for my own reasons. Go to bed. You’ve got a long and painful day ahead… assuming you survive.”
“But I might not?” she said hoarsely.
“I’ll do my best. I’d miss your company.”
“But?”
“Death is a possible consequence.”
She woke during the night. Holm had not moved in hours. He was sitting cross-legged on his oilskins, cutting the heatstones to pieces, shaping each piece and testing how it fitted together with its neighbours.
When she roused to see daylight streaming in, he was still leaning back against the ice wall, snoring gently. On the floor before him sat a heatstone helmet made of hundreds of perfectly shaped pieces, each slotted so they locked together like a three-dimensional jigsaw. What a marvellous craftsman he was.
The helmet was ten feet away, yet her head throbbed. How bad would it be with it on her head, surrounding her pearl to force the gift out of it into herself? It would be agonising; it might be unbearable.
There was no point dwelling on it; her oath must be kept. Just get on with it!
She put on the helmet and the pain was so bad that she wanted to scream. But she could not. She couldn’t see, couldn’t hear, couldn’t speak, couldn’t move — then her senses overloaded and the pain vanished -
“I can’t find it anywhere, Errek,” said Lyf. “What if it’s been destroyed?”
He was searching frantically, tearing the stones out of the wall of his temple with his bare hands and breaking his nails as he did.
“Pray it has not,” said the faded wisp that was Errek First-King. “The balance is tilting rapidly now — far more rapidly than it should — and all forms of magery are failing with it. You’ve been profligate, Lyf.”
Lyf hurled the stone aside, checked the space where it had been, then heaved at another. “The enemy are devils. I had to make sure we won the first battles within hours. I had to make them believe we were invincible.”
“Was it worth it? We would have won within days anyway.”
“I hadn’t realised that pearl magery was limited; that the well could be emptied so easily.”
“And now you know,” said Errek. “Don’t waste any more magery on the war. You’ve got to save it for your greatest task — if it’s not done soon, the balance will tilt so far that it’ll be irreversible.”
“Without the key, I can’t even begin.”
Too late for what? thought Tali. What balance? Why irreversible?
“Then get the master pearl,” said Errek. “It’ll lead you to the key.”
The pain flooded back and overwhelmed her again.
Tali wrenched off the helmet. Her head felt as though an axe was buried in it. She rolled over, crawled out to the entrance and vomited down the icy slope.
Holm handed her a cup. She rinsed her mouth with it and allowed the rest to run down her throat, which felt hot and inflamed, as if she had been screaming.
“Better?”
“No!” she croaked. “Why did you let me do such a stupid thing?”
“You only had it on for ten minutes.”
“Ten very bad minutes.”
“Not as bad as they might have been. Did it work?”
“I don’t know; all I remember is pain. But I don’t feel any different.”
“Why don’t you test your magery?”
“Don’t have the strength.”
“Or are you afraid to try in case you fail?”
She didn’t answer.
“Success is built on the failures you learn from. If you’re afraid to fail, you’ll never succeed.”
Tali pointed a trembling finger at him. “I’m getting an urge to blast every grey hair off your leathery old head.”
“I could use a haircut.”
She sat down, abruptly, as the memories flooded back. “I saw something.”
“What?”
She told him. “And it’s not the first time. I also saw Lyf and the same ancient ghost after my first blood-loss reliving. His name was Errek and he was telling Lyf what to do. Who was he?”
“Errek First-King. The very first of the line of Cythonian kings, ten millennia ago. He’s a legend, credited with saving the land and inventing king-magery.”
“Is it true?”
“After all this time, who could tell?”
“Well, Lyf was asking Errek’s advice and taking his orders.”
“It raises many questions,” said Holm. “What balance was Lyf talking about, and why is it tilting so rapidly? What’s changed?”
“And what’s the key he needs so badly? Is it a key to a safe? Or a secret door?”
“When was it lost? Did he say?”
“No; but I first envisaged him searching his temple not long after the chancellor fled Caulderon,” said Tali, thinking it through. “And that’s the first time Lyf had been alone in his temple since the Five Heroes abducted him — ”
“Two thousand years ago. So he’s looking for something hidden — or put away — before then.”
“Which he needs for his greatest task. But what could be more important than winning the war?”
“I don’t know…” Holm got up, went to the entrance and looked out, then came back. “But we have learned a piece of vital intelligence.”
“What’s that?”
“Lyf’s speedy victories weren’t due to his superior armies after all. They came because he used colossal amounts of magery.”
“Why is that important?”
“If magery is failing everywhere, he won’t be able to use it in battles to come. It evens things out.”
“It explains why mine has been so hard to use,” said Tali.
“Which brings me back to the link between your pearl, your magery and heatstone. Why would its emanations create pearls and be linked to their magery?” Holm paced to the entrance again, strode back. “Got it!”
“Got what?”
“Heatstone was unknown in the ancient world. So what brought it into being?”
“No idea,” said Tali.
“Yes, you do,” said Holm. “It was created by a great and powerful event, to do with magery, long ago…”
“I don’t know enough about history — ”
“Yes, you do.”
She stared at Holm. “Are you talking about Lyf’s lost king-magery?”
“It seems the most likely answer.”
“Are you saying that, after Lyf’s death, his king-magery sank into the earth and turned a great area of rock to heatstone?”
“It explains the link between heatstone and the pearls, and their magery. It explains everything — and raises a worrying question.”
“But king-magery was a vast force,” said Tali. “Far greater than any other kind of magery. So why is it failing?”
“Maybe it isn’t. But lesser kinds of magery we know are dwindling. It’s time to test yours. Let’s see if the helmet has worked.”
Tali looked into her inner eye, and for the first time in the real world she saw the coloured loops and whorls that held power. They were dull, though, far weaker than they had appeared in the Abysm. She reached to the nearest loop and drew power. Her skull throbbed.
