The Curse on the Chosen (The Song of the Tears Book 2)

by Ian Irvine

  ‘I can imagine,’ said Flydd. Flangers wouldn’t be swinging his sword anytime soon. The odds were lengthening.

  He leaned on the wall, taking advantage of the brief respite to run through his options. ‘I don’t know what to do,’ he said to Colm, who was hanging over the outer wall and appeared to be throwing up. ‘We can’t fight seven hundred. If the Numinator comes back soon, I’m tempted to surrender and pray that she’s merciful.’

  Colm wiped his mouth on his bloody sleeve and straightened up. ‘She won’t be.’ He bore a gash on his forehead and a bloodstained bandage was wrapped around his left wrist.

  ‘I suppose not. I –’

  The tower tilted so far to the left that the prisoners came sliding across the roof towards Flydd. It swayed back to the vertical and slumped another four or five spans in one stomach-lurching rush, before steadying briefly, then slipping down a little further.

  Colm began to throw up again. Flydd looked over the wall. The inner tower had dropped about fifteen spans since they’d reached the roof, and was now only half its former height. The ring-shaped area between it and the surrounding Tower of a Thousand Steps was filled with water, floating pieces of ice, bloodline registers, and bodies.

  Ice coffins containing those less-than-human corpses, plus jars and amphorae of all sizes with their gruesome contents, were floating amongst pages from the registers. The lower levels of the inner tower must be completely flooded, and every subsidence forced coffins and frozen corpses out into the water. At least the Whelm could not get in from below, unless they swam. Unfortunately, it left Flydd with no way to escape.

  The tower sank another span, sending fountains of brown water up on all sides and filling the air with unpleasantly smelling mist. The fountaining water froze in the air and fell back with a million little splashes.

  More Whelm were scrambling up the rungs; the platform encircling the inside of the Tower of a Thousand Steps was crowded with them. From the exaggerated jerkiness of their gait, and the wailing and banging of closed fists on their bare chests, they were in torment.

  ‘The master must be dead, else she would have protected her tower!’ cried a gangly male, standing on the brink of the platform and rending his clothes in his anguish. ‘She’ll never return now.’

  Another Whelm appeared behind him, a gaunt fellow wearing a black loincloth and a crown of iron barbs. Holding a staff of black iron in his left hand, he banged it on the floor of the platform so hard that chunks of ice crumbled away. He stared across the ring of foul water and his glittering eyes met Flydd’s.

  ‘There’s no sign of her, and even her eyrie is failing,’ the Whelm cried. ‘Once more we are masterless, miserable Whelm.’

  ‘What are we to do?’ cried the other.

  ‘Bring down the Tower of a Thousand Steps on their heads. Bring it all down!’

  FORTY-THREE

  ‘Can she be dead?’ said Flangers.

  ‘I doubt it very much,’ said Flydd. ‘Whelm are overly emotional. They’ll soon discover their error, I’m sure.’

  ‘Who’s that?’ said Colm, eyeing the gaunt Whelm wearing the crown of iron barbs.

  ‘A Whelm sorcerer,’ said Chissmoul. ‘Zofloc; he’s the closest they have to a leader.’ She shivered. ‘He has no eyelids, and eyes like worms impaled on fish hooks, and he never takes them off you.’

  Flangers rubbed the neat bandage Chissmoul had made over his shoulder wound. ‘Other Whelm have no interest in us; not even in the women prisoners. Even the lowest Whelm see us as beneath them, but Zofloc is different.’

  ‘It was as if he was trying to look right through my skin,’ said Chissmoul.

  Flangers scowled and gripped the hilt of his jag-blade. ‘Where can his power come from?’

  ‘From me,’ growled Yggur. ‘Via the Numinator’s bracelets. Get down!’

  Flydd ducked behind the wall. A flight of arrows, fired from the platform to their left, skidded across the roof, and screams from the thronged prisoners told that several missiles had found a mark. They scrambled to shelter behind the wall, though Flydd noted chthonic fire creeping across it too. This tower can’t last another hour, he thought despairingly. I can do no more to defend it and when it fails we’ll be dumped in the icy water, where the Whelm will pick us off with arrows at their leisure. Our only hope lies in the Numinator coming back and saving us, and what a feeble hope that is.

  And the irony is, the God-Emperor will never know what happened to his sole remaining enemies. We’ll just vanish. The Numinator won’t say, if she has survived, and nothing could induce the Whelm to spill their master’s secrets.

  More Whelm were climbing the rungs, carrying equipment on their backs up to the platform where Zofloc waited, staring unblinkingly at the inner tower, arms folded across his scarred chest.

  ‘What are they doing?’ said Chissmoul.

  ‘They’ve got lengths of twisted metal pipe,’ said Colm. ‘Copper pipe and glass vessels, and – a huge copper cauldron.’

  More pipework was set down on the platform, then a frame assembled from wood, and three Whelm began to fit a contraption together under the supervision of the lidless-eyed sorcerer. The cauldron, which was a good span across, was set on a tripod standing on a hearth assembled from bricks, and filled with ice. A circular copper hood was fitted to the top and clamped tight; coils of pipe were connected to it, spiralling up before passing through an enormous block of ice, and down into a large glass flask.

  ‘It’s a still,’ said Chissmoul. ‘Dad had one at home when I was little, and he showed me how it worked. He used to make spirits from fruit and vegetables and grain – well, anything he could get his hands on, really. He was a bit of a drinker, poor old Dad.’

  ‘What happened to him?’ said Flangers.

  ‘He made a bad batch and it killed him.’ She sighed. ‘We had great fun, Dad and I – when he wasn’t drinking.’

  ‘What could they distil out of ice?’ said Colm.

  ‘If you put ice in a still,’ said Yggur, ‘all you get out the other end is water …’

  ‘Unless the ice is laced with chthonic fire,’ Flydd said dully.

  Chunks of black, bituminous material were stacked on the hearth beneath the cauldron. The sorcerer Whelm kindled them by thrusting the end of his staff into the pile. Flames licked up around the cauldron, and soon white fire began dripping into the flask. It looked far brighter than the chthonic flame in Flydd’s flask had been, and it had a luminous glow.

  Shortly the hood of the cauldron was raised and the water tipped over the edge into the swirling brown flood far below. The cauldron was refilled with fire-laced ice and the process repeated, over and over.

  ‘What can Zofloc want with so much chthonic fire?’ said Flydd a good while later. The sorcerer already had far more of it than Flydd had brought to Noom in his little flask.

  ‘He’s planning something apocalyptic,’ said Yggur, who was sitting up now and looked a little better. ‘You’ve got to stop them, Flydd.’

  ‘I can’t,’ said Flydd. ‘I’ve got nothing left.’

  ‘Dig deeper. This is the end of the world.’

  It wasn’t like Yggur to indulge in hyperbole. Flydd felt a chill creep over him, but he could not think of a thing to do. He settled against the wall, shivering, and with every passing minute felt worse. Aftersickness, long delayed, was hitting him hard.

  Minutes passed. Every so often a flight of arrows would come at them from a new direction and everyone would scramble around the wall, leaving one or two more bleeding prisoners behind. None of the arrows were aimed at Flydd’s little group, however.

  ‘Zofloc is saving us for a special fate,’ Yggur said cynically.

  The sorcerer Whelm looked like a man who ruled through fear and took pleasure in others’ pain, Flydd thought.

  The distillation continued until the flask was so thick with white fire that its luminous glow lit up the underside of the Tower of a Thousand Steps high above them. Zofloc gave orders and t
he Whelm began to decant the concentrated chthonic fire into smaller vessels.

  ‘Flangers,’ said Flydd, ‘you’ve got good eyes. What’s he doing now?’

  ‘They’re not as good as they used to be,’ said Flangers. Chissmoul helped him up and he stared down at the Whelm. ‘Sorry. I can’t tell.’

  ‘It looks like they’re sealing fire into little rods or darts,’ said Chissmoul. ‘And fitting them to the tips of arrows.’

  Flydd had forgotten that, as a pilot, she’d also had fine eyesight.

  ‘What would chthonic flame do if it were fired into human flesh?’ said Yggur quietly.

  Flydd’s scalp crawled. ‘I wouldn’t want to find out.’

  The sorcerer took one of the dart-tipped arrows. Someone handed him a bow. He fitted the arrow to the bow and swung it around. Yggur ducked hastily, until he realised that the arrow had been aimed down at the water.

  ‘What the blazes is he doing?’ said Flangers.

  The sorcerer released the arrow, which struck one of the floating, not quite human bodies. The body jerked; its legs and arms thrashed, then it rolled onto its back and began to splash clumsily towards the inner tower. Bubbles dribbled from its open mouth and its eyes shone with the colour of white fire. Zofloc took aim at another floater.

  ‘He’s turning the dead into animated corpses, like Phrune,’ said Colm.

  ‘How do you stop a corpse?’ said Flydd.

  ‘With another corpse,’ said Yggur.

  ‘Have you ever animated a corpse before?’

  ‘Of course not!’ Yggur cried. ‘I abjure the necromantic arts, in all their forms.’

  ‘We’d best not try, then, else Zofloc might seize control of them as well.’

  ‘Block the stairways.’

  ‘I haven’t got the strength.’

  ‘Get the prisoners onto it.’

  Flydd dragged himself across to the prisoners and ordered them to defend the two stairways. They did not move.

  ‘Look over the side,’ he said. ‘See the dead in the water. They’re not human, are they? But they’re coming for you.’

  The prisoners set to, furiously heaving the shattered ice blocks into piles to block the stairways at the last turn. Before they had finished, the tower shuddered and settled another five or six spans, jerking down in stages. Brown water spurted up the steps like the sea through a blowhole, sending the workers tumbling over one another and coating everyone in noisome muck that reeked of death long postponed and well overdue. An ice amphora was blasted up to shatter against the perimeter wall. Its contents, the preserved body of an unborn child with a bony crest across the top of its head and a stubby tail, fell to the roof. Chissmoul stared at it, shuddering, then edged it down the steps with the toe of her boot.

  One of the prisoners, who was hauling blocks well down the stair, let out a screech and ran on the spot, his bare feet slipping on ice. He made it up a couple of steps, but a dark shape lunged, sank its teeth into his calf and dragged him down into the darkness. Rending and crunching sounds ensued. The remainder of the workers fled up the steps, leaving the stair unblocked, and nothing could induce them to go down again.

  Shortly the first of the animated corpses appeared. She would have been a pretty young woman had her skin not been a sickly green. She was followed by a large, shaggy fellow with claws for nails and body hair as thick as felt, though it was falling out in patches across his barrel chest like the coat of a dog with the mange.

  Flangers struggled to his feet. He was even paler and had a shake in his good arm.

  ‘You can’t fight a corpse, Sergeant,’ said Flydd.

  ‘Fighting is all I’m good for.’

  ‘The dead don’t feel pain or injury; you can’t harm them.’

  On the other side of the roof, the prisoners began to scream, then stampeded across. More shaggy figures were clambering out of the second stair.

  ‘What about fire?’ said Colm. ‘Real fire, I mean.’

  ‘We haven’t got anything to burn.’

  ‘Sorcerous fire then.’

  ‘I couldn’t light a splinter at the moment.’

  Flydd tried not to listen to the screams as the animated dead attacked the prisoners. There was nothing anyone could do. He held Flangers back.

  ‘Stay with us, soldier, and that’s an order.’

  ‘It’s my duty to protect the weak and the innocent, surr.’

  ‘It’s your duty to be here when I need you. The fate of the world may depend on Yggur and me getting out of here, and that depends on you.’

  Flangers remained where he was, though he did not look pleased about it.

  The prisoners had worked out a way of attacking the corpses: a dozen men and women would take hold of each one and hold it down until its head could be cut off and hurled over the side. It was crude and moderately effective – the headless bodies blundered about in circles, attacking whatever they touched, whether human, ice or other corpses. But more dead were coming up all the time and soon they would outnumber the prisoners. Flydd could feel the tension gnawing at him, the familiar burning pain in the middle of his chest. He didn’t have the strength for it, but if he couldn’t save them now, no one could.

  ‘There’s only one way left,’ he said to Yggur. ‘Assuming I can make it work.’

  Flydd withdrew the mimemule from an inner pocket, stripped his concealing illusion from it, and laid it on his palm while he tried to prepare himself. This was really going to hurt.

  ‘Is that what I think it is?’ said Yggur, perking up visibly.

  ‘I have no idea what you think it is,’ Flydd said evasively. ‘Quiet. I’ve got to think.’

  ‘I think it’s a mimemule.’ Yggur hauled himself to his feet. ‘And to the best of my knowledge there was only ever one mimemule on Santhenar.’

  ‘Not now, Yggur,’ Flydd said warningly, for Colm was walking their way and the last thing Flydd wanted was for him to discover the truth. Too late – he’d seen it.

  ‘What’s a mimemule?’ said Colm, gazing at the grubby, battered ball of wood.

  ‘A mimicking device,’ said Yggur, ‘and therefore forbidden to the Faellem, but Faelamor –’

  Colm’s head shot around. ‘Faelamor?’ He sniffed the air.

  ‘She brought it from Tallallame,’ said Yggur, ignoring Flydd’s frantic efforts to shut him up. ‘It was one of her greatest treasures, for it could be used to mimic almost anything, even devices of great power. Where did you get it, Flydd?’

  ‘I’ve had it for ages,’ lied Flydd. ‘Hush, this is a difficult Art to master –’

  Colm snatched the mimemule from Flydd’s hand, put it under his own nose and sniffed deeply. ‘You bastard!’ he roared, his eyes starting out of his head. ‘You stinking, thieving mongrel. I know that smell – it must have been buried in Faelamor’s cave. This is part of my heritage, and you stole it from me.’

  Flydd flushed. ‘You renounced your heritage, if you recall, and stormed out of the cave.’

  ‘You hid the mimemule, you filthy liar, then took advantage of me. And you … you …’ Colm was almost incoherent with rage. ‘You provoked me to renounce my heritage! You must have been plotting to take it from me all the time, even back in the Nightland.’

  Yggur was staring down at Flydd from his lofty height, looking faintly disgusted.

  ‘I did not; not at all.’ Flydd snatched the mimemule back and held Colm at bay with his jag-sword. ‘You stormed out of the cave, if you recall, and it was only then that Maelys found –’ Why, why had he mentioned her name? He’d made things worse, far worse, and there was no way to get out of it now.

  ‘You mean she was in on it too?’ Colm shrieked, so loudly that the animated dead turned their heads towards him, and so did Zofloc the sorcerer on the distant platform. ‘I knew there was something sick about you, the moment I met you. And as for Maelys, the little bitch –’

  Yggur, who had been watching Flydd’s discomfort with a certain amusement, put up his hand and said q
uietly, ‘That’ll do, Colm. You’re undermining the prisoners’ faith in us, and it can only make things worse. Besides, since you did renounce your heritage, the treasure belongs to the first person to find it.’

  ‘He knew I didn’t mean it,’ Colm said savagely.

  ‘Then why say it? How is anyone to know what you intend? Too late to cry about it now; it’s done. What’s your plan, Flydd?’

  ‘The mimemule created the portal that brought us here –’

  ‘Really?’ breathed Yggur. ‘How did you do that?’

  ‘I’d brought Rulke’s virtual construct with us. The model on which his real construct was based.’

  ‘Clever! How did you know it was in the Nightland?’

  ‘I must have read about it in the Histories. Or the Tale of the Mirror.’

  ‘That bit wasn’t in the final tale. It was deliberately left out at my request, just in case.’

  Flydd felt another chill, but just shrugged. ‘Who knows where I might have read it in the archives of the scrutators?’ And yet, he was sure he never had read it, so how could he know? ‘I tried to get us out of Dunnet with the virtual construct but I couldn’t get it to work –’

  ‘Dunnet!’ Yggur looked shaky again. ‘You’ve been to Dunnet. Were …’

  For once Flydd felt for him, for that valley had been the scene of his most devastating defeat and he was still scarred by it. ‘The bones of your men lie where they fell.’

  Yggur slumped against the ice wall, breathing heavily. ‘I’ll never forget that day, as long as I live. A whole army dead, for nothing.’

  After a decent pause, Flydd went on. ‘Anyway, Maelys accidentally touched the virtual construct with the mime-mule bag and the portal opened instantly.’

  Yggur stood up again and, with an effort, regained control of himself. ‘So the mimemule mimicked the virtual construct. How interesting. Why didn’t you make another portal hours ago?’

  ‘I didn’t have the strength. And I was afraid that the Numinator had opened another, up at the top of her tower. Two portals so close together could be deadly.’

  ‘Indeed. But the portal could still be there, and you’ve got even less strength now.’