by Ian Irvine
She simply did not know. Her old life and old dreams had been so thoroughly destroyed that Maelys could not imagine any future beyond the struggle against the God-Emperor, not even if, by some miracle, they won.
As she walked, she was trying to think of a way to rescue Nish, but no plan came to mind. Without her taphloid she could not attack Vivimord from behind, for he would detect her aura before she came close enough to strike.
Maelys was edging around a corner when she saw the flame again, rushing up an eerily shimmering shaft. Vivimord could hardly have gone that way; he must have turned back, but how close was he? She squinted against the brightness. There he was, just ten paces away! She ducked back. His head was bowed and he was dragging Nish, whose eyes were closed, his arms sagging. Vivimord must have renewed the enchantment on him.
She scuttled back the way she had come until she saw a cranny in the tunnel wall; Maelys squeezed into it and waited for them to go by, praying that Vivimord would pass on the other side of the tunnel, far enough away that he would not detect her aura. The cranny was unnervingly webbed with cords and had a faint odour of octopede, but it was too late to look for another hiding place. She crouched in the base of the cranny with the rapier pointing up over her head, just in case.
Vivimord stopped a few paces past her, sniffing the air. Maelys had never wanted her lost taphloid more, both for its concealment of her aura, and as a weapon she knew he feared. The rapier would be little protection against him.
‘Where the devil has he gotten to?’ he muttered.
Vivimord sounded agitated and she wondered why, since he had what he wanted. He hurried on, stopping frequently to sniff the floor and examine it for tracks, the dark radiance of the cursed flame dripping from his hooked fingers. She followed, keeping no more than thirty paces behind. Being so close posed a grave risk if he turned back, but she was afraid to let him get further ahead in case she lost him.
Several times she saw brighter glimmers as he used his Art to find the path, before finally he said, ‘Ah!’ and turned up a steep slope, no wider than his shoulders, hauling Nish behind him.
Maelys followed, her heart thumping. At the top she waited until she heard him moving down the next tunnel before going after him. She was so tired that every step was a struggle, and was plodding along, squinting at the swinging puddle of black light coming from his fingertips, when Vivimord suddenly crouched and light stabbed out from his fingers.
She thought he’d discovered her, until it illuminated something large and black flapping out of the darkness ahead of him. The wing-ray let out a brittle cry and shot over his head, dripping blood, to disappear in the darkness between Vivimord and her. Maelys didn’t hear it hit the floor, which meant that it was still alive and would attack her next. And even if she killed it, Vivimord would discover her when he came to investigate the ruckus.
She ducked down, holding the rapier out to protect her face, praying that the wing-ray would pass over her head and keep going. She saw nothing, heard nothing, then a thumping blow drove her backwards a good span. It had driven itself onto the point of the rapier and every furious flap was forcing it further along the shaft towards her. Maelys couldn’t hold it and wasn’t game to pull the rapier out in case the beast came at her. Feeling its cold breath on her hand, she let go and threw herself out of the way.
‘What the blazes was that?’ she heard Vivimord cry, and his black light began to grow again.
She crawled back to a curve in the tunnel, defenceless now. He would recognise the rapier, deduce that it was hers and hunt her down, but she dared not retreat further for fear of dead Phrune. She knew he was coming after her.
Light crept from Vivimord’s hand, streaking low along the tunnel floor, and she realised that he was also afraid. The mountain was full of troops and scriers now, and not even Vivimord’s illusions could hide him from the direct gaze of Gatherer. A narrow beam touched on the body of the wing-ray, whose fleshy wings were undulating like waves on the sea. He studied it from several paces away while she held her breath and felt the backs of her hands prickling. His acrid sweat was unpleasantly strong. The floor of the tunnel moved underfoot and the muted roar of the flame grew louder. Vivimord hastily turned away.
He hadn’t seen the rapier. He must have thought that his blast had brought the wing-ray down. She was about to move when he spun around, arm upraised. Had he seen her; heard her; sensed her aura?
Vivimord was absolutely still. Black flames dripped from his fingers again, and if he came after her, he could blast her down as easily as he had the ray. Her palms oozed sweat; projections on the floor were cutting into her knees, and her stomach was so empty that it hurt. Then the light was drawn back towards his hand, and died to the faintest glimmer as he turned away. It took a long time before she could find the courage to follow.
It was completely dark now but she could tell where the ray was by its wing flutters. She approached gingerly, unable to tell whether it was badly injured, perhaps dying, or about to wriggle free. She was reaching down to feel for the rapier hilt when she remembered that barbed stinger in the middle of the creature’s back. She couldn’t risk it; the rapier would have to be abandoned.
She went sideways until she touched the far wall of the passage, keeping as far from the wing-ray as possible, and continued. After following Vivimord for some minutes she heard him squelching through mud, then scrambling up a rubbly slope, dislodging small rocks as he went. Water trickled down and momentarily the smell of the marsh blew his reek away.
Nish must have fallen, for she recognised his pained cry.
‘Get up there, Deliverer,’ Vivimord grated, ‘and be quick about it. Flydd can’t hide from Gatherer up top, and neither can I.’
So he had been following Flydd. Relief flooded her; she wasn’t completely alone. Maelys crept to the mud at the base of the slope and waited for them to move away, for she could not move silently over the rubble. She started up, then stopped. What if Vivimord had sensed her and was waiting at the top?
Something clacked behind her, like an iron-shod boot on stone. The God-Emperor’s troops must have picked up the trail. She had to take the risk. Peering up the slope, she made out a darkly ragged opening against the night sky, curtained with the straggling roots of marsh plants – it was the plateau at last. And five minutes from now she could be dead; or Vivimord could have won; or, more likely, the God-Emperor would have taken the lot of them.
She had just reached the top when the ground lurched upwards, collapsing the steep bank of an empty pond next to the opening; a river of muddy slurry poured down the hole and the rubble began to move under her feet. Maelys snatched at the roots as she fell, twisted them around her wrists, and they held.
As she pulled herself up, the marsh burst open some distance ahead and slightly to her right, and boiling mud lumps began to splatter down all around. She scrambled across to an intact section of the overhanging bank, covering her head with her arms. If it collapsed she would be buried alive, which had a slight edge over being cooked in boiling mud.
Despite several more lurches and shudders, the bank held, but as the mud eruption paused, she heard that boot clack again, and a deep male voice.
‘It’s started. Get up there.’
Lanterns were approaching the base of the rubble slide. She would be discovered in seconds. She had to risk the eruption.
Maelys dragged herself up the bank and was creeping through the marshes with clots of hot mud raining down all around her, when there came a shattering boom from not far ahead, and a wild gust of hot wind knocked her flat on her back. The greeny black abyssal flame roared up, casting brilliant light and deep shadows across the top of the plateau.
And there, hanging in the sky high above, was the God-Emperor’s sky palace. The trap had been sprung and there was only one way out of it – Flydd’s spell into the shadow realm. If he’d discovered how to make it work. If he was still alive.
‘If you don’t open the portal now,’
Colm cried, ‘it’ll be too late.’
Flydd, who was standing on the tip of the tilted obelisk gnawing his upper lip, didn’t answer. He could hear soldiers pounding up steps directly below the obelisk, making for the cavity at its base, and others would be storming up the rubble slide he and Colm had just climbed. At the same time, Jal-Nish’s Imperial Militia were moving steadily in from the edges of the plateau, tightening the noose, while flappeters, bladder-bats and wing-rays guarded the skies. Now the sky palace hung high above them, all the more ominous because it was absolutely silent.
‘Jal-Nish has blocked every avenue of escape save the one I no longer want to take: the portal to the shadow realm. But I have no choice – as a novice at the perilous art of portal making, aiming it anywhere in the real world would almost certainly be fatal.’
Flydd held the phial containing the cursed flame against his forehead, hoping that it would wake his lost Art so he would not have to rely on the woman’s ominous mancery, but nothing came to him. Before renewal he’d known how to open the shadow realm; he had rehearsed Rassitifer’s spell many times in case he’d needed to use it in an emergency, but that memory had not returned.
It left no alternative but to follow her perilous procedure. Dare he?
‘Flydd!’ choked Colm. ‘Do something.’
Flydd twisted the bung out of the phial and touched a fingertip to the wisp of cursed flame coming from the top. His finger began to go rigid, but a little charm – one of hers – came into his mind to prevent the paralysis. He worked it and gingerly touched his finger to his forehead. Heat twisted in, like a corkscrew; faded.
He tried to draw power from the flame the way he had seen her doing it, but nothing came to him. ‘Why isn’t it working?’
‘Maybe he’s blocking you.’ Colm glanced up at the sky palace, shivered, then slid down to the base of the obelisk and scrubbed mud off his blade with a handful of reeds.
‘Could Jal-Nish be blocking her Art? How could he understand what he’s never seen before?’
‘Perhaps the tears allow him to understand all powers.’
‘If he’d understood the flame, he would have ordered his scriers to use it against me down below.’
‘Unless he’s playing with you,’ said Colm. ‘He does love to torment his victims.’
‘Jal-Nish never puts personal pleasures ahead of his own safety. I’m a threat to him, so he’ll secure me first, or kill me. Perhaps I need more power. She used a mere wisp of the cursed flame, but it’s her Art and she could be subtle. I don’t have time for subtlety.’
‘There may be a reason for it,’ said Colm. ‘The portal spell may be dangerous.’
‘No doubt it is, though hardly more than him.’
Flydd glanced up at the sky palace. It was measurably lower than before, and the abyssal flame, roaring ever higher, might have been seen a hundred leagues away. The next few minutes would determine what kind of a symbol it became in the Histories – a beacon of hope, or a mark of despair.
He drew out the bung but this time touched the rim of the phial to his forehead. The shock was like a heated auger boring into his skull, but when it passed, the portal spell had not worked. If only he still had the fifth crystal, the most powerful of all. He’d primed it years ago and it would almost have opened the path into the shadow realm by itself, had he not lost the power to set the spell off. If he’d had it, he could have thumbed his nose at her and whatever she wanted from him.
Wishing was futile. He had to have more power, far more than was held in this tiny phial. Dare he draw upon the power of the abyssal flame itself? The power now being wasted, flaming into the heavens, must be enough to open the shadow realm a thousand times. Assuming he could draw upon it without killing himself; and let the whole damn world go to ruin if he failed!
Vivimord was creeping across the marshes, dragging Nish through the mud behind him, and Maelys followed as closely as she dared. She would not be heard in the roar of the flame, but she would be clearly visible in its lurid light if Vivimord glanced back.
He topped a small rise, then crouched in a hollow, out of sight. What was he up to? She crawled after him, wishing she still had the rapier and fantasising shockingly about sticking it in one side of him and out the other. She hadn’t gone far when an unpleasantly familiar sound swept towards her, flutter-flap. It was a flappeter, the most fearsome of all Jal-Nish’s flesh-formed creations. Maelys went still and kept her head low, glad of the camouflaging mud that covered her from head to toe.
The flappeter cruised over her and kept going. Maelys slowly lifted her head. She could see the obelisk clearly now, and a man’s outline at the top: Flydd! Her eyes pricked with tears of relief. He was alive!
His arms were upraised as if he were attempting mancery. She stood up carefully, fists clenched, for the flappeter could pluck him off before he realised it was there. She was about to shout a warning when he swung his arm backwards; green fire stabbed at the creature, which swerved wildly, almost crashed into the swamp, then began to climb away, smoke rising from its lower feather-rotor.
It had taken a lot out of Flydd, though. He was bent double, choking or throwing up, and the peril had not gone away. A flock of bladder-bats descended, and lights were advancing from every direction – the Imperial Militia were coming. As she watched, Vivimord disappeared behind the column of flame.
She had to warn Flydd about Vivimord, though Maelys couldn’t see how to do so without alerting him to her presence. She crept on, keeping low, and was edging past the fury roaring up from a circle burned through the marsh when she smelt the ghastly odour of perfumed oil and rotting entrails, and was caught from behind in two oily hands.
‘Slybbily meee,’ slurred dead Phrune, licking pieces of intestine off his green lips.
EIGHTEEN
Flydd wiped his mouth as he watched the flappeter climb away, knowing he hadn’t done it much damage. It would soon be back, if the bladder-bats or wing-rays didn’t get him first.
‘Get on with it,’ Colm said from the ground.
Flydd spat over the side. ‘My mouth tastes like something a stink-snapper has been digesting for a week.’
Colm chuckled. ‘That’s another death to look forward to, if Jal-Nish doesn’t get us first.’
Flydd managed a smile. ‘I’ll try the portal spell again, though I’m sure I did it perfectly last time …’ Unless he was missing something. He had attempted it three times now, and felt blocked each time. He simply could not draw on the monstrous power of the abyssal flame. There had to be another way.
The woman in red had used the flame during his renewal hallucination; he now remembered what she’d done, but still he could not get it to work. She was using him to do something she could not do herself, and yet he had no choice. He didn’t think she was on the God-Emperor’s side, or Vivimord’s.
He was going through his memories of her, trying to see if he’d missed anything, when he noticed something she had avoided thinking about earlier; something she hadn’t wanted him to discover. Whatever she was hiding, it had to do with the power she’d considered using a while back, then rejected because it was too dangerous. Dare he try? It could hardly be more dangerous than allowing Jal-Nish to win.
He explored the memory she’d tried to hide. Whatever this new power was, it lay buried deep below Mistmurk Mountain, at the base of a narrow, ring-shaped shaft bored through a thousand spans of rock down to the source of the vapour which fed the abyssal flame. The source was concealed by that flame, and hidden below the centre of the hearth from which it emanated.
Flydd whipped out the bung of the stone bottle in which he’d captured some of the abyssal flame; it flickered greenly black over the lip. He hesitated for a moment, doubting himself, then swiftly upturned the bottle against his forehead for a second and thrust the bung back in.
Bone-grinding, scalding pain tore into his head; sickening waves followed it, slowly fading. He closed his eyes, and it was as though a door had slid open at
the base of the mountain, and a hatch swung back at the centre of the abyssal flame’s hearth, to reveal what lay beneath.
It wasn’t the source of the abyssal flame at all, nor of the vapours that fed it. It was a small rectangular box made from clear crystal – cut from a single diamond, perhaps – and within it he saw the faintest movement. There was something white inside; small and white and restless. Flydd did not see how it could hold the power he so desperately needed; power to overcome whatever was blocking him and blast open the entrance of the shadow realm, but there had to be a good reason why it had been hidden so carefully.
Dare he? He’d die if he didn’t. And it probably wouldn’t work anyway.
He traced out the way of power – the way to use the abyssal flame and open that box, her way. At the moment he had that thought, the flame brightened and roared higher. Flydd shuddered at what he was about to do, but he was going to do it anyway.
Using the abyssal flame as a focus, he reached down, down, down to the very core from which it came, to the hearth through which the vapours that fed it issued. Using the power of the abyssal flame against itself, he spun it into a spiral, ever tighter, until it formed an irresistible emerald spear. He took that spear and hurled it down through the hearth, cleaving it in two.
The halves of the hearth fell to either side and the spear continued down, directed with unerring aim, until it struck the top of the little diamond box, met resistance, and overpowered it. The lid shattered, the webbed and layered protections inside it tore, and a small white flame was released. It was such a tiny flicker that Flydd felt sure he was the butt of a monstrous joke. How could that be the power he was looking for?
Nooo! screamed the woman in red into his mind, so desperately that he felt her throat tear and tasted blood in the back of his mouth. Not the chthonic flame, you fool.
Too late! He had committed a mancer’s most cardinal sin. He’d used power without knowing what he was doing, and there was no way to fix it now – the chthonic flame, whatever that was, was out of its box, and every one of its protections had been broken.
