by Ian Irvine
Why state the obvious? The Numinator must have some weakness, some very great need, and Maelys had to find out what it was.
‘How came you here?’ the Numinator repeated. ‘You did not walk all the way from the south; neither did you fly in an air-floater.’
Surely she knew about the portal? And if she did not, why not ask Flydd? Because Maelys was more likely to give something away?
‘I didn’t really understand it,’ said Maelys.
‘Liar! It was a portal, wasn’t it?’
How could she deny it? The Numinator must be able to see everything from up here. ‘Yes,’ said Maelys, then it occurred to her that Flydd might have wanted it kept secret. Portals were extremely difficult to make.
The Numinator sat up even straighter. ‘And Flydd created it? How, precisely?’
‘I don’t know anything about mancery …’
‘But you know what he did. You saw him make it. Speak!’
The Numinator leaned forwards, fixing her frosty eyes on Maelys and rubbing a ring on the middle finger of her right hand, and Maelys felt so overpowered, so flustered, that she spoke without thinking.
‘Only the second time.’
‘The second time? Are you telling me that Flydd twice made a portal?’
It was impossible to resist her; Maelys simply did not have the will. The Numinator must have bewitched her in some way. ‘Three times,’ she whispered. ‘Once when we escaped from Mistmurk Mountain, and then …’ She dared not mention the Nightland, for that would lead to Emberr, ‘and then to get to Plogg –’
The Numinator held up a slender, veined hand. ‘Plogg is a village in Elludore, and that is a land I know well. Why did you go to Plogg?’
‘It was close to a hidden valley …’ Maelys trailed off, for the Numinator wore an enigmatic smile.
‘I checked my registers last night. Your companion, Colm, was heir to a small, impoverished estate in Bannador called Gothryme, and feels he was robbed of it. His heritage – the entirety of it – is recorded in the Histories and even mentioned in the twenty-third Great Tale, the Tale of the Mirror. You were going to Dunnet, were you not, to find the treasure left in a cave there long ago, concealed by a perpetual illusion?’
‘Yes,’ Maelys said faintly. If the Numinator knew everything that had ever happened on Santhenar, how could Maelys possibly take her on? But she had to. Never give up, she told herself. Never, never, never.
‘And did Colm find his heritage?’ said the Numinator.
Maelys was on very dangerous ground. She dared not mention the mimemule that Flydd had vanished, else the Numinator would take it. The mimemule, whatever it was, was her only hope of escape from Noom.
‘The illusion had been broken. The treasure was gone. There was just a wooden box full of dirt and an empty pouch.’
It was the hardest lie she had ever told, even more difficult than lying to the God-Emperor about being pregnant with Nish’s child. She forced herself to meet the Numinator’s gaze, but lightly.
The Numinator frowned. ‘But Faelamor was the greatest illusionist of the age. How could any mancer break her illusion?’
‘I know nothing about such things.’ Maelys was standing as rigidly as the Numinator, her fingers curled like butcher’s hooks. Relax, you’ll give yourself away. Her fingers did not want to relax.
The Numinator tapped her nails on the icy arm of her chair. ‘The treasure is irrelevant. But three portals, one after another – how could any common mancer do that?’
Maelys remembered Flydd questioning where his ability, or his knowledge to make portals, had come from. Dare she ask? It seemed overly bold, but she had to be, else she must fail.
‘What are you saying, Numinator?’
The Numinator was staring into the flames, rubbing her right forefinger against her thumb. ‘Making portals is one of the greatest and most difficult of all the Secret Arts – so difficult that, over the course of the Histories, hundreds of years have often gone by without any successful portals being made. To make a single portal is exhausting, and cripplingly so for all but the greatest mancers …’
So how could Flydd do it, even with the aid of the woman in red?
‘Xervish Flydd was never a truly great mancer,’ the Numinator went on. ‘His genius lay in other areas – leadership and strategy. I would have thought a portal beyond him, even at his peak. But three portals, one after another, and soon after taking renewal, beggars comprehension. Unless …’ She looked up into Maelys’s eyes. ‘You pressured him. Were you there while he used the renewal spell?’
‘He required me to watch.’ Maelys did not want to be reminded of that horror again. ‘He wanted me to know what I’d done to him.’
‘Tell me about it. Omit not the least detail.’
Maelys did so, and when she’d finished, the Numinator sat back, frowning. ‘Is that all?’
‘Have you taken renewal?’ said Maelys.
‘I have no need of it,’ the Numinator said loftily.
Therefore she wasn’t old human – so who was she?
‘Did anything unusual happen to him?’
‘I wouldn’t know. I’d never heard of renewal before …’
‘You’re withholding something,’ said the Numinator. ‘Keep nothing back – or else.’
‘During renewal,’ said Maelys, ‘Flydd saw a woman dressed in red. He thought he was her, at one stage, or that she was him, but he later realised that was just a hallucination. He saw her afterwards, too, when he was hunted through Mistmurk Mountain. She taught him about portals. That’s how we escaped.’
‘A woman in red?’ The Numinator looked at Maelys sharply. ‘It still does not add up. One mancer can’t simply tell another how to make a portal; there is a craft to it and it requires long practice. Tell me how the first portal was made, and where it was intended to go.’
Maelys felt that every word was a minor betrayal; she wanted to defy the Numinator but her will to resist was being overpowered by some mighty spell or Art. She told the Numinator about Flydd’s original plan to escape via the shadow realm, how it had been frustrated by the destruction of the fifth crystal, and all that followed.
‘I do not know this shadow realm,’ said the Numinator, frowning. ‘At least, not by that name. How did he make the first portal?’
‘I can’t say,’ said Maelys. ‘We were separated for ages; I only reached him as it was opening. I think it had something to do with the chthonic flame.’
‘And then the portal took you to the shadow realm? Tell me about it.’
Maelys didn’t know what to say, and the Numinator seized on her hesitation. ‘Don’t even think about lying to me, Maelys Nifferlin.’
Maelys, thinking of the lie she’d already told, felt a flush moving up her cheeks. What if the Numinator could tell? She dared not risk another lie; Emberr’s life was at stake. ‘We did not go to the shadow realm. We … we ended up in the Nightland.’
The Numinator’s right hand clenched so tightly on the arm of her ice chair that steam rose from it, then, with a little crack, it crumbled into chunks. The fire died down to the faintest flicker in its bowl, just enough to illuminate her right cheek. A shower of droplets fell from the point of the steeple, high above. One splashed on the top of Maelys’s head and it burned like ice.
‘There is no Nightland,’ said the Numinator. ‘It collapsed to nothing as its one prisoner, Rulke, escaped for the last time. How do you know it was not the shadow realm?’
‘Flydd said it was the Nightland. There were all sorts of virtual devices in it, including Rulke’s original pattern for his construct. That’s how Flydd made his second portal – he powered the virtual construct with the chthonic flame you took from him.’
The Numinator drew in a sharp breath and held it for a long time. Bringing the fire to life with a hand gesture, she pulled her chair close to it, then closer still, rubbing her hands together. Her fingers had gone blue; she hunched over the flame, trembling.
‘It ma
kes no sense,’ she said at last. ‘When Rulke escaped the second time, the Nightland was collapsing to a singularity, for the power that had held it together was exhausted. How can it still exist two hundred and twenty years later?’
‘Flydd asked that very question,’ said Maelys. ‘He said it would take an immense amount of power to maintain such a huge place, and why would anyone go to all that effort, for nothing …’ Thinking of Emberr, she felt her cheeks grow warm again and struggled valiantly to control herself. Not for nothing.
‘A huge place?’ said the Numinator. ‘The Great Tale says that it was tiny by the time Rulke escaped, and shrinking towards nothingness.’
‘Flydd thought it had rebounded,’ Maelys ventured.
‘No!’ the Numinator exclaimed. ‘Such things do not happen by themselves. If the Nightland still exists, it’s because someone has made it so. The God-Emperor? Is it his ultimate prison?’ she mused. ‘Or the best hiding place of all – his perfect refuge in times of danger? No, I don’t think so. I don’t believe he even knows of its existence, so why is it there?’
Don’t react, Maelys told herself, thinking of Emberr. He was in danger from his mother’s enemy and she had to protect him.
The Numinator rose from her chair and glided towards Maelys; she was within reach before Maelys realised what was happening. She turned to run.
‘Stop!’
Maelys froze, unable to defy the Numinator.
‘You know something. Speak!’
Maelys shook her head and tried to back away. She wasn’t game to speak, for she knew her voice would betray her. Her feet wouldn’t move, and she leaned so far backwards that she overbalanced and hit the ice.
The Numinator crouched beside her, her stern, sad face just an ell away. ‘Speak, girl! What else did you find in the Nightland? What is it for?’
Maelys had to remain silent; she’d promised Emberr that she would keep his secret. But she could not hold out against the Numinator’s overwhelming power. ‘Emberr,’ she gasped, rolling her r’s just as he had on that perfect day when they had met.
The Numinator reared backwards onto her heels. ‘But … that is a man’s name. Speak, girl! Tell me everything.’
‘I met a young man called Emberr,’ said Maelys. ‘He was tall and handsome …’ The Numinator was frowning at her again. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘Why is he there? Who holds him prisoner?’
‘He’s not a prisoner,’ said Maelys. ‘He was born there.’
‘Born there?’ The Numinator was so shocked that momentarily she lost control, her mouth opening and closing like a stranded fish.
‘That’s what he said. Because he was born in the Nightland, he can never escape – at least, unless a woman takes his place. That’s what his mother told him.’
‘Ahh!’ The Numinator’s eyes glittered. ‘And who was his mother?’
‘He didn’t say,’ said Maelys, really afraid now. The Numinator knew something and it was not to Emberr’s advantage. ‘He said that she left him there but could never come back.’
A fire was burning in the Numinator’s eyes now. ‘When was this?’
‘Emberr didn’t say. A long time ago.’
‘What about his father?’
‘He didn’t mention him.’
‘I wonder …’ said the Numinator. ‘No, it’s not possible, after all this time.’ She raised her voice. ‘Gliss?’
The Whelm’s sandals clapped up the steps. ‘Master?’
‘Take her down again, then ensure I am not disturbed, under any circumstances. I have much to do and little time in which to do it.’
THIRTY-FIVE
Maelys was so worried about Emberr that it took her ages to get to sleep, but when she did, she began to dream about him at once. It was a powerful, sensual dream where he had taken her by the hand and was leading her up a winding path towards a pretty glade …
‘Maelys. Wake up!’
It was Colm’s voice. She clutched her furs about her, yearning to go back to the dream, but it was gone. ‘Yes?’ she said irritably. It was still pitch dark.
‘Flydd has found a way out. Hurry!’
She felt for her fur-lined boots and dragged them on. In the cold, the leather had gone as stiff as wood. ‘How?’
‘Just come!’ he hissed.
It didn’t seem possible, but Maelys asked no more questions. Her mind was already full of them. Could the Numinator be the enemy of Emberr’s mother? When she had heard about him, her eyes had blazed.
Maelys recalled a series of crackling shrieks in the night. At first she’d thought that someone was being tortured, but had come to realise that the sounds had been mechanical in origin – like monstrous slabs of ice being torn apart and put back together again. The Numinator was making something, up in her eyrie.
She picked up her pack and felt for the door. ‘Where are you, Colm?’
‘Here!’ he said from behind her.
‘How did you get in?’
‘Flydd made a hole in the wall.’
She felt about and found a smoothly scalloped opening in the ice, leading into the next cell. ‘Ow!’ The ice had burned her, but with a stinging, freezing fire which had blistered her fingertips. Looking down at the hole in the wall she noted a faint white flicker there. Flydd had brought two flasks of chthonic fire to Noom, but had only given one to the Numinator. He must have used the other and the white fire was eating away the ice.
Maelys raised her stinging fingertips to her mouth, but thought better of it and wiped them on the wall instead. A lick of flame began to eat at that ice, too, though it soon went out.
‘Maelys?’ said Flydd urgently.
She scrambled through the hole, careful not to touch the sides, and into Flydd’s cell. It was identical to hers though faintly illuminated by a patch of white flame spreading outwards from a hole in the far wall, into Colm’s cell. Maelys looked askance at the fire. It did not feel right, or safe.
‘I think she was telling the truth,’ said Flydd. ‘I don’t believe she knows anything about the antithesis to the tears and there’s no point us being here.’ He was crouched in the darkness at the rear of the cell; Maelys could only see the curve of his back. ‘I’m wondering if the Numinator has spent so long brooding on her obsession with the bloodline registers that she’s gone insane.’
Maelys didn’t think she was insane at all, but felt too bruised by her interrogation last night to say so.
‘She won’t harm us while we can do useful work,’ Flydd went on, ‘but she won’t let us go either. We’ve got to escape, now, while she’s distracted.’ Another of those ice-tearing shrieks shivered down from above. ‘I’d like to know what she’s up to.’
‘She questioned me again last night,’ said Maelys. ‘She used some kind of spell on me. I couldn’t hold out …’
‘Her Arts could make the very stones speak,’ Flydd said curtly. ‘What did you tell her?’
‘She seemed really interested in your power to make portals, one after another. She found it, er, incredible.’
‘As do I.’
‘I also mentioned the woman in red. The Numinator knew I was holding something back and forced me to tell her about the Nightland. She was shocked; she couldn’t believe that it still existed, and said some great mancer must be maintaining it.’ Maelys, guiltily, didn’t mention Emberr. She felt bad enough that she’d broken her promise and revealed his name to the Numinator.
Another crackling shriek echoed down.
‘What is she doing?’ mused Flydd, looking up. ‘She’s using mighty amounts of power up there – and my chthonic flame, I think.’ He stood up. At the base of the wall, the ice twinkled with the white fire that was steadily eating through it.
‘I don’t like that stuff,’ said Colm. ‘It doesn’t feel natural.’
‘It’s not,’ said Flydd. ‘And had we possessed any other weapon, I would have had nothing to do with chthonic fire, either. This way.’
‘Where are we g
oing?’
‘To find those workers we saw the other day. We’ve got to have help. We can’t escape on our own.’
‘Can’t you make another portal?’ said Colm.
‘Not without the virtual construct.’
‘Where are the other prisoners held?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Flydd, ‘though I don’t suppose they’ll be very far away.’
‘There will be guards,’ said Maelys. ‘Whelm.’ She was really afraid of the Whelm, afraid of their obsessive loyalty; even more afraid of their inhumanity.
‘Seven hundred of them, the Numinator said,’ Flydd mused. ‘And Whelm see better in the dark than we do. They’re relentless in pursuit, but slow and awkward in a fight.’
‘Plus they’re armed,’ said Colm. ‘We’re not.’ Their weapons had been taken before they had been put to work on the bloodline registers.
‘Let’s see what I can do about that.’
Flydd swiftly drew three elongated outlines on the wall with the lip of his pyramid-shaped flask. He stood back while the flickering white fire ate into the ice, then kicked through in the middle and the lengths of ice fell into Colm’s cell. Flydd picked one up in a cloth-covered hand and wiped it. The flames faded and he was left with a rude club, as hard as stone. He handed it to Colm, wiped down the second, smaller club and gave it to Maelys, and took the last for himself.
‘A crude weapon, but robust.’
‘A knife would be better,’ said Colm. ‘One sideways blow and the blade would snap. Our cudgels will cave in a dozen Whelm skulls before they break.’
Maelys let out an involuntary cry. She did not like to be reminded about how brutal combat was.
‘If you take up a weapon you must be prepared to use it,’ said Flydd, ‘and face up to what you’ve done to another human being with it, good or evil.’
‘I know,’ she said faintly. ‘It’s just – I was gently brought up.’
‘Not so gently that you didn’t see animals butchered for food, or wild beasts killed when they threatened the herds or the children. The Whelm won’t be gentle if they catch us, and treating them gently will reveal a weakness that they will exploit ruthlessly.’
