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

by Ian Irvine

  ‘I would have done anything,’ said the Numinator. ‘My memorial had to be completed, whatever the cost.’

  ‘It never will be,’ said Flydd. ‘This ends here, now.’

  He sprang towards her, and Yggur did too, but she wove between them, tapping Yggur’s left bracelet as she passed, and a dazzling flash lit up the tower top. He fell to his knees, shaking his wrist; Maelys smelt burnt skin and charred flesh.

  When she could see clearly again, the Numinator had scrambled over the ice barricade and the Whelm were closing around her, concealing her from view. Jag-swords up, they went backwards en masse, around the turn of the stairs.

  ‘She took an awful lot of power that time,’ said Yggur through bared teeth. His left arm had developed an uncontrollable tremor and he had to cling to the side of the empty fire bowl. ‘She’ll be back. Flydd, make the bloody portal and get us out of here!’

  ‘I’m still suffering from the last one. Besides, we have one more matter to deal with.’ Flydd’s eyes met Yalkara’s.

  ‘My son is dead,’ she said, ‘but if a child comes of his union with Maelys, I will have it.’

  ‘You won’t!’ cried Maelys despairingly.

  ‘The Numinator’s determination pales before mine,’ said Yalkara. ‘My power is almost spent but, when I return, I will have the child. Until then, Maelys is under my protection.’

  She made a sign over Maelys’s head and her aura sprang out, deep blue with a carmine border. The taphloid’s innards spun; the aura faded.

  ‘Your protection won’t matter to Jal-Nish,’ Maelys burst out.

  ‘What’s he got to do with it?’ Yalkara said.

  ‘I – I told him I was pregnant with Nish’s child; it was the only way to save my family, for Jal-Nish wants a grandchild more than anything.’

  ‘Yet you were a virgin when you lay with my son,’ said Yalkara. ‘Explain.’

  Why hadn’t she kept her mouth shut? Maelys would have given anything to avoid repeating her mortifying lie, but there was no way out of it. ‘I nursed Nish when he was injured. Back at Mistmurk Mountain, I told Jal-Nish that I had gathered Nish’s spilled seed and placed it within me, so as to get with his child, but that wasn’t true.’

  ‘You lied to the God-Emperor?’ said Yalkara. ‘Are you very bold, or incredibly stupid? The latter, I think; assuming you’re telling the truth now.’

  ‘I am,’ Maelys said desperately, staring at the hard faces around her, and none harder than her former friends, Colm and Flydd. ‘You’ve got to believe me this time …’

  ‘How can I believe anything you say, even the story you fed me about Emberr? I think that, knowing his secret vulnerability, you carried chthonic fire back to the Nightland to kill him.’

  ‘I loved him!’ Maelys wailed, feeling every pillar of her life crumbling around her.

  ‘Another lie?’ said Yalkara, granite-faced.

  ‘Everyone tells lies sometimes,’ said Maelys. ‘I –’

  ‘But they don’t boast about it to their enemies. You’re a fool, Maelys Nifferlin, and that’s unforgivable in the mother of my grandchild.’

  ‘I didn’t boast,’ wept Maelys. ‘I was just trying to explain.’

  Yalkara cut her off. ‘The Numinator is coming back, armed with a mighty power. Flydd, we need the portal now.’

  Flydd put his hand into the pocket of his coat and began fiddling with something there. ‘I’ll try, though I don’t know where to go. Portals can only open in a few special locations, but I can’t think of any that would be safe from Jal-Nish.’

  ‘I know a couple of lands we might try,’ said Yggur, ‘though they’re at the furthest corners of his empire.’

  ‘I’ll jump to any corner of the empire, as long as it’s warm. The very marrow of my bones has frozen.’

  ‘I’ll conjure up an image –’ began Yggur. ‘Maelys, what is it?’

  HELP! HELP! HELP! HELP! HELP! She fell to her knees in the slush, holding her head, as the painful cry went on and on. It was vaguely familiar now. Pictures began to form in her mind.

  ‘Feet, squelching through knee-deep mud,’ she wheezed. ‘Forest covered in vines and ferns; beautiful birds with tails like rainbow-coloured umbrellas. Hot! Sweating.’

  ‘Hot sounds good,’ said Flydd.

  ‘A tall mountain shaped like a white, curved thorn or horn,’ said Maelys.

  ‘I know it!’ cried Yggur. ‘Far to the tropical north, Lauralin ends in a stubby peninsula called Gendrigore. No boat can land on its wild shores; the only way in is via a jungle track over a high pass guarded by a horn-shaped peak of white rock. We could hide in Gendrigore forever.’

  HELP! HELP! HELP!

  Could it be who she thought it was? It didn’t seem right, for she never panicked, never seemed out of control. ‘I think it’s Tulitine,’ whispered Maelys. ‘Calling for help.’

  ‘Who is Tulitine?’ said Yalkara.

  Maelys explained.

  ‘You mentioned her when we first met,’ said Flydd thoughtfully. ‘If the Defiance have gone to Gendrigore, Nish might be there too. Can you locate this place, Yggur?’

  ‘I believe I can pull the image from her mind and give it to you.’ He took Maelys’s wrist.

  ‘Hold the taphloid to your forehead, Maelys,’ said Yalkara. ‘Hurry! I don’t know where the Numinator has found such power, but it’s growing fast. Soon she’ll be stronger than all of us.’

  Maelys didn’t like the way Yalkara said us. She could never be one of us.

  ‘The Whelm are coming!’ rapped Flangers, on watch at the barricade. ‘And the Numinator is carrying Zofloc’s fire flask – it’s as bright as the moon.’

  Maelys pressed the taphloid against her head and concentrated on the white-thorn peak.

  ‘Got it,’ grunted Flydd, scooping up chthonic fire from the pit in the floor. The other hand was still in his pocket.

  ‘Gather around,’ Yggur said quietly to the prisoners. ‘Get ready to jump the second it opens.’

  With a roar, at least twenty Whelm stormed the barricade, boosting each other up and over, then the Numinator came soaring high above it, holding the flask of distilled white fire in her right hand. Maelys could feel the peril radiating from it. If only Flydd had left it alone. But if he had, she would never have met Emberr.

  And Emberr would still be alive. If only she hadn’t gone back to him.

  The Numinator landed a few spans away, sliding in a curve like an ice skater. ‘Hold! Be still!’ she rapped, shaking the flask, whose brilliance swelled until it was dazzling. ‘I have enough distilled flame to raze the entire Island of Noom. Maelys, come with me.’

  ‘Don’t move,’ said Yalkara, shielding her eyes. ‘Flydd, make the portal.’

  Flydd whipped his fist from his pocket, held it high, then brought it together with the hand holding the chthonic flame. This time a whirling, cocoon-like portal exploded into being, pointing north.

  ‘Get in!’ he cried, and the prisoners ran for its puckered entrance. A shrill wind whistled down its wormhole, briefly interrupted as each person sprang in and was fired away like peas down a pea shooter.

  The Whelm moved to stop them but the Numinator raised her free hand. ‘The prisoners may go,’ she said with a fixed smile. ‘Why should I feed useless mouths? You, too, Flydd and Yggur. The lot of you may go, save Maelys.’

  ‘If I have to stay,’ gasped Maelys, finding it hard to breathe, ‘at least give me something in return – to help them fight the God-Emperor.’

  The Numinator frowned, then nodded. ‘Everything has a price, even you. Beg your boon, and if it’s within my power I will provide it.’

  ‘Tell them where to look for the antithesis to Jal-Nish’s Profane Tears.’

  ‘You asked me that before,’ said the Numinator. ‘I do not know, though … all knowledge collected by the God-Emperor’s spies passes through Gatherer. Look within the tears.’

  ‘Thanks!’ Maelys muttered. They’d come all this way and lost so much, for nothing.
Perhaps the antithesis did not exist, and there would be nothing with which to fight the God-Emperor.

  The Numinator inclined her head, as if Maelys’s thanks had been genuine. She wasn’t looking at her, though. She was staring at Yalkara, defying her enemy to take her on.

  Yalkara stood with her arms folded across her breast, waiting, but for what?

  The Numinator sniffed the air and looked around sharply. ‘What’s that in your hand, Flydd?’

  ‘A little focus, to help me create the portal,’ he said, too hastily.

  She raised the roiling flask. ‘You may be able to hold ordinary chthonic fire, Flydd, but were I to smash this flask, its contents would sear the flesh from your standing bones, then eat the bones as well. Show me what’s in your hand.’

  He opened his hand to reveal the dirty little ball of wood. ‘It’s just a mimemule …’

  ‘Ahhh!’ sighed the Numinator, as if a precious secret had been revealed. ‘But there is no such thing as just a mimemule. There is only one mimemule, and that is it.’

  ‘How can you tell?’ said Maelys.

  ‘It is the mimemule Faelamor brought to Santhenar from Tallallame when she came here, thousands of years ago. I would know it anywhere.’

  Yalkara stepped forward and stood next to Maelys, studying the dirty wooden ball. Maelys shrank away and Yalkara smiled grimly. The last of the prisoners had passed through the portal now; it began making a soft thrum-thrumming. Colm, Chissmoul and Flangers stood beside the entrance; the Whelm were arrayed in a semi-circle behind the Numinator with the sorcerer Zofloc standing before them.

  Yggur gestured. Flangers and Chissmoul jumped in, though Colm remained to the side, fists clenched around the black hilt of a jag-sword.

  ‘My mimemule,’ he grated. ‘It was left to Karan, and after she murdered her family my branch of the clan inherited all that remained. I am the sole heir; the mimemule is mine.’

  ‘I don’t care who lays claim to it,’ said the Numinator, though there was a strange, feverish light in her eyes which hadn’t been there before. ‘Hold it up so I can see.’

  He did so and she stared at it for a full minute. ‘And you’ve used it, what, seven times?’

  ‘Only three times,’ said Flydd. ‘Once to open the portal from Dunnet, once down below, and now.’

  ‘I also used it,’ said Maelys, ‘when I killed the flappeter. And you made our furs with it, Xervish.’

  ‘I read seven times,’ said the Numinator. ‘Five times recently, and twice a long time ago.’

  And Rulke’s virtual construct had also been used before, Maelys remembered. By whom?

  ‘Where did you find it?’ said the Numinator.

  ‘In Faelamor’s treasure cave in Dunnet,’ said Flydd. ‘Just as it is told in the Tale of the Mirror.’

  The feverish light grew. The Numinator’s eyes reflected the chthonic flame as though it burned inside her. What had the mimemule told her, and why did it matter so much?

  ‘I spent ages in that cave during the Time of the Mirror,’ she said. ‘I know it well. Karan refused to claim her treasure and, despite the perpetual illusion, the cave was soon looted. I went there after her death but nothing remained.’

  ‘The mimemule wasn’t with the box that had contained the treasures,’ said Maelys. ‘I found it buried in the dirt.’

  ‘Well, it wasn’t there when I came,’ said the Numinator. ‘I dug up the floor of the cavern to make sure.’

  ‘Someone took the mimemule and later replaced it,’ said Flydd. ‘So what?’

  ‘It is one of the most precious artefacts of all,’ said the Numinator. ‘Why take it, then travel all that way to bring it back?’

  Flydd shrugged. ‘To leave it for its rightful owner?’

  ‘Me!’ Colm hissed.

  ‘Go through, Colm,’ snarled Flydd.

  Colm’s jaw knotted and for one terrible moment Maelys thought he was going to cut Flydd down, then he whirled and jumped into the portal.

  ‘I think I’ll take a little trip to Dunnet.’ The Numinator held out her hand for the mimemule. ‘Come, Maelys.’ The flask of chthonic fire shook ever so slightly; the Whelm were tense as wire.

  ‘Now, Flydd!’ Yalkara roared.

  Her left arm snaked around Maelys’s waist, lifted her effortlessly and threw her into the portal. As Yalkara dived after her, the wind tumbled them away, head over heels.

  The Numinator swung the flask at them but Flydd and Yggur jumped in together. The portal began to close and she couldn’t get to it in time. In furious silence she hurled the flask at the side wall of her eyrie, where it burst, spraying distilled fire everywhere. She drew power from the white fire, clapped her hands and vanished, and the Whelm with her.

  As Maelys was fired along the portal, the Tower of a Thousand Steps exploded into a million shards of chthonic-fire-riven ice which were blasted up in a churning mushroom cloud. Fire-ice began to fall onto the Island of Noom and the frozen surface of the Kara Agel.

  And Maelys could tell that it was going to feed on the ice, and grow and spread, until white fire had consumed every speck in the Antarctic realm of Santhenar.

  FORTY-NINE

  Gi winced every time she looked at Nish, for his whole face was swollen and the black bruising had spread up beneath both eyes and halfway across his right cheek. He was squatting in the mud with his commanders, Hoshi, Gi, Clech and Forzel, eating handfuls of raw, mouldy grain, for Boobelar’s worst followers had fled in the night with all the good food. He had about four hundred and fifty men left, of which a hundred were so ill with dysentery that they could barely walk and certainly couldn’t fight.

  They were eating the grain raw because they dared not light a cooking fire this close to the pass, even if they could have made the saturated wood burn. They still had a few haunches of meat but it was so foul that eating it raw would have been a death sentence.

  ‘We’ve got food enough for one more meal,’ he said quietly, ‘but I’m not sure what to do. If Curr has betrayed us, attacking via Liver-Leech Pass will put us between the jaws of Father’s pincers. Yet if we retreat, the enemy can surge down and sweep us off the sides of the mountain. Whatever we do, it’s bound –’

  ‘Don’t say it,’ said Gi with an anxious glance at the miserable troops, who were huddled further down the slope. ‘If you don’t say it, it won’t have as much force. If we retreat, we’ve lost. But if we continue the attack there’s a faint chance we might succeed, and … if I have to die, I’m not going to die running away.’

  Nish’s stomach churned from the worst breakfast he’d had since escaping from his father’s prison; it fumed in his belly like quicklime. Might they succeed? He thought it most unlikely, but Gi was right; attack was their only hope. ‘Let’s put it to the vote, shall we?’

  ‘Let’s not,’ said Clech, the fisherman. He rubbed his lantern jaw with fingers scarred from his fishing lines, and his gentle eyes met Nish’s. ‘You’re our commander; we trust you. Give the order and we’ll follow it, whatever it is.’

  Nish didn’t think he had ever been that trusting, and he’d known more bad commanders than good ones, yet his militia were fighting for their country and their families, and nothing could better stiffen the backbone and fortify the quaking heart. He hoped he wouldn’t betray their trust. No, he told himself, I won’t, no matter what.

  ‘All right; we attack.’

  He sent the ill troops down in a staggering line, sure that he would never see any of them again. The able-bodied, all three hundred and forty-seven of them, headed up the razor-edged roof of the world, crossed the ravine at a natural rock arch and climbed along the left-hand ridge of a valley shaped like a steeply tilted oval bowl, in the incessant, teeming rain. The rain was cool at this height, which was a pleasant change. The humidity wasn’t as stifling but his clothes still chafed with every movement. Above them towered the ominous white-thorn peak, pointing to the heavens like a warning finger.

  ‘Are you sure this is only the wet se
ason?’ Nish grumbled. ‘It feels like the really wet season to me.’

  ‘When the really wet season gets here, you’ll know it,’ said Forzel, rubbing at a mark on his hand. He always looked his best, and even here his clothes appeared to have been freshly washed. ‘The rain beats down so hard that it drives the hairs back into your skull and out your chin. In the really wet season, even women and children have whiskers.’

  Nish smiled; Forzel was always talking nonsense.

  ‘It’s a wonder The Spine hasn’t washed away,’ said Hoshi.

  ‘The faster it falls down, the faster the stone giants in the cracks of the world push it up again,’ said Forzel. ‘Careful where you sit down; you might get a pointy rock right up the –’

  ‘What’s that?’ hissed Nish. He’d caught a faint flicker-flash from the lower side of the bowl.

  ‘It’s the turn back signal,’ said Gi, sheltering her eyes from the rain.

  ‘It could be a trap,’ said Hoshi.

  ‘Anything could be a trap,’ said Nish, ‘but I’ve a feeling this isn’t. We’re going down – this way.’

  They descended a stony, moss-covered slope then crept into the rainforest covering the floor of the valley, heading towards a small oval clearing. He left the militia well above it and continued alone. The sodden ground squelched with every movement, like a sponge made of peat.

  At the upper side of the clearing he stopped, alert for a trap. Nothing moved; nothing seemed suspicious, though an army could have been hidden in the forest below him and he would never know it.

  He took a deep breath, which hurt his broken nose abominably, walked out into the open, and waited. Shortly a woman stopped at the lower edge and stood with her arms folded, watching him. She seemed familiar so he went closer. From a distance she could have been Tulitine’s daughter, for she had the same tall, slender figure; rather more upright, though, and much younger. Not yet fifty.

  ‘Who are you?’ Nish said as he approached, for the likeness was uncanny. ‘Are you Tulitine’s daughter?’