by Ian Irvine
‘You!’ said the Stilkeen. ‘Thief? Where – white-ice-fire?’
‘I d-don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Jal-Nish thrust Reaper out at it and began the spell anew.
Yalkara shifted her weight slightly, as if preparing to spring. When she struck the Numinator down in Emberr’s cottage, she had been inhumanly fast.
The Imperial Guard swung their weapons from the Stilkeen to her, but Jal-Nish’s spell failed as the Stilkeen wrung its hands together. With red flashes bursting from the tops of their skulls and their smoking eyes sliding out of their sockets, the guards fell dead. Klarm was hurled down the slope, clinging to his knoblaggie, then slowly rolled over, breathing steam from his nostrils. The archers on the ridge fired but their arrows exploded in mid-air.
‘You – thief!’ The Stilkeen caught Jal-Nish with one arm, tossed him high and whirled under him, the frilled membrane spinning out like a wing and lifting it off the ground, then caught him in mid-air.
‘Stilkeen claims – God-Emperor – and … world.’ Each word was like the throbbing of air sucked into a furnace, then it hurled the caduceus straight down so hard that it blasted grass and earth away, and penetrated half a span into solid rock. Its shaft glowed white-hot; the eyes of the entwined serpents were like red coals. Maelys could feel the heat beating on her cheeks.
‘Hostage,’ rumbled the Stilkeen. ‘For – white-ice-fire.’
It shivered with pain, then spun faster and faster until it and Jal-Nish were just a blur. Suddenly the tears flew out and landed fizzing and shrilling at Klarm’s feet.
‘Klarm, my one honourable lieutenant,’ came Jal-Nish’s fading voice. ‘Guard the tears; maintain my realm until I return.’ In a reverse explosion of black flame streaking in to a point, they were gone.
Yalkara threw herself at the tears but was too late – Klarm had already taken them.
‘Oh, I see it now,’ came the Numinator’s voice from just a few steps away.
Her outline became an image hovering on a disc above the grass, though the Numinator maintained a slight transparency. She wasn’t taking any risks; wasn’t fully appearing until she was ready – for what?
‘I see it all now,’ she went on, and the bitter edge to her voice was even stronger than it had been in her tower. ‘Everything fits; the terrible story is complete.’
‘Terrible indeed,’ said Tulitine. ‘And no one would know better than you, grandmother.’
The Numinator turned her way, started visibly at seeing a youthful woman where, evidently, she had expected a crone, then turned away without acknowledging her granddaughter. Maelys was shocked, and it brought home, as forcefully as anything she’d seen in the past days, just how inhuman the Numinator had become.
‘Perhaps you’ll enlighten us, Numinator,’ said Yggur, again stroking his corroded bracelets. ‘Though I don’t see how it can be worse than your awful tale.’
‘Oh, it’s worse – Yalkara’s crime began all the tales of the Three Worlds, including my own. I know about the Stilkeen and its loss; Rulke told me. It was the most beautiful and enigmatic being in all the void, one whose constantly changing form, indeed its very existence, was its art and craft; and its Art. It could roam across all of the eleven dimensions of space and time, even the ones rolled up to infinitesimal coils; and for millions of years it did – until someone stole its soul-core at the only moment when it was vulnerable – as it shifted to cross from one set of dimensions to another.
‘That awful sacrilege severed the Stilkeen’s body from the higher parts of its being and left what you just saw – its physical self – trapped in our universe, while its spirit aspects were lost in dimensions it could no longer reach. The Stilkeen suffered the most terrible pain and grief for the loss of its other aspects, that it might never join with again. It might never become whole again.’
The Numinator’s eyes met Yalkara’s, challenging her.
‘I found chthonic fire hidden in the core of an exploded comet,’ said Yalkara arrogantly. ‘No one –’
‘You knew what white-ice-fire was,’ said the Numinator, ‘and what it meant to the Stilkeen – its soul-core; the force that bound its physical and spiritual aspects together. Rulke warned you not to touch the chthonic fire, but you stole it anyway, for it was a treasure beyond any price – it offered an escape from the void that you dwindling, insufficient Charon had been looking for all your lives.’
‘And why shouldn’t I take it?’ Yalkara flashed. ‘In the void, life was a constant battle: survival or extinction. I chose life for my kind.’
‘You gave them life – escape to the Three Worlds – and began a thousand tales that echo to this day; but in another, deeper irony, you robbed them of their future.’
Yalkara drew a sharp breath, and seemed to dwindle. She could not meet the Numinator’s eyes. ‘We did not know it then.’
‘On Aachan, something had rendered almost all the Charon sterile,’ the Numinator explained. ‘No one knew why; they thought the tragedy was due to Aachan itself, for on Santhenar, Rulke and Kandor did father children. But the problem wasn’t Aachan, was it, Yalkara? It was the stolen chthonic fire, which existed in many dimensions and could never be truly contained. That’s why, when you worked it out, you brought the white fire to Santhenar and hid it where no one would ever find it. You did not tell the other Charon what you’d done to them, though, did you?’
‘I could not,’ said Yalkara in a bleached voice. ‘It would have destroyed them.’
The Numinator, who looked completely solid now, stepped down off her hovering disc onto the grass. ‘It would have destroyed you in their eyes, and you could not bear that, for you’d always been hailed as one of the greatest. The Charon would become extinct because you’d stolen the fire, but no Charon must ever know what you’d done.’
‘And no one would have known, had you not tried to take control of Flydd’s mind, Yalkara,’ said Yggur, ‘and unwittingly allowed him into yours, where he saw the hidden fire.’
‘I had no choice. I had to get Emberr out of the Nightland before …’
‘The Stilkeen found it,’ said Yggur. ‘No wonder you left Emberr there, terrified of its revenge.’
‘It wasn’t the Stilkeen I was worried about. I’d hidden the Nightland from it.’
‘What then?’ Yggur grated. ‘Please tell me that you haven’t done something even worse.’
‘No; everything springs from my first folly,’ said Yalkara with bowed head. ‘When I took the white fire, the Stilkeen’s severed spirit-aspects, or revenants, fell into another dimension, a netherworld, and brought it to life. Flydd calls it the shadow realm, and it’s the place where the dead from many worlds go. There the lost revenants roam like mischievous spirits, giving the dead a kind of life for their own amusement, and tempting living necromancers and corrupt mages –’
‘Like Vivimord,’ said Maelys, remembering his threats.
‘The revenants grow ever more desperate to rejoin with Stilkeen. I could not hide the Nightland from them much longer. I had to get Emberr out before they found it.’
Maelys had an unpleasant thought. ‘I pushed dead Phrune into the column of chthonic fire on Mistmurk Mountain. His body fell down the shaft but five wraiths came up, looking just like him, and they were all laughing at me. Have I done something bad?’
Yalkara froze. ‘The white fire would have burned his dead flesh away, reducing him to his corrupt essence – those wraiths, and they would be drawn inexorably to the shadow realm. Once they reached it, Stilkeen’s revenants would soon have detected the tang of the chthonic flame on them. By now the revenants must know that the white-ice-fire – the one force that can rejoin their severed selves to the Stilkeen – has been found. They can’t know where – Phrune can’t tell them that – but they’ll be struggling to break out of the shadow realm and find the flame.’
‘Then give it to them!’ cried Maelys. ‘The damned stuff has caused nothing but trouble since you stole it.’
�
��It doesn’t work like that.’
‘Why not?’ she shrieked.
‘The Stilkeen will want … repayment.’
‘Good!’ Maelys said vengefully.
‘Repayment from everyone who has ever used the flame,’ said Yalkara, ‘or defiled it by touching it; or has even seen it.’
‘Seen it?’
‘The Stilkeen is – was, and will be again – a higher being. Even setting eyes upon its soul-core is a monstrous sacrilege, one you’ll all have to pay for.’
‘But not you?’ What was Yalkara planning?
‘Everything you’d done was coming undone,’ said the Numinator, ‘so you planned to take Emberr and run back to the void, leaving Santhenar to the mercy of Stilkeen and its revenants.’
‘Survival or extinction!’ exclaimed Yalkara. ‘Us or them. It always comes down to that in the end.’
‘Not this time!’ cried the Numinator. ‘Your folly destroyed the only thing you cared about, and you’re not getting what’s left of him.’
The two women sprang at Maelys in the same moment, but Yggur cast off the bracelets which he had corroded to nothing, whipped her aside and, with a finger-flick, called the Numinator’s hover-disc into Maelys’s place. Yalkara and the Numinator collided with it in mid-air. The Numinator went transparent again; Yalkara too; light streaked all around them and they vanished as completely as the Stilkeen had done.
Yggur set Maelys on her feet on the grass, but did not let go of her. She could feel the power in his fingers – power such as he hadn’t had in seven years.
‘What do we do now?’ said Flydd. ‘This changes everything.’
‘It changes nothing!’ said Klarm. ‘The greater beings may lie and cheat and play with the fate of worlds, but a simple man can only hold to his oath.’ He shot a steely glance at Flydd, then settled the tears carefully around his neck. ‘We have a common enemy now – the Stilkeen. We cannot afford to be divided, and none of you can fight the tears, or use them, so the God-Emperor’s realm must prevail for the good of Santhenar. Surrender and I will do what I can for you.’
‘Even with the fate of the world at stake, we’re not such fools as that,’ grated Flydd.
‘Then you leave me no choice. I’m sorry Flydd, Yggur. You were good friends, but Santhenar must come first. It’s war to the death, for all save Colm, Nish and any offspring he may have.’ Klarm stepped up onto the crumpled air-raft. The song of the tears rose and fell, the air-raft lifted and wavered off through the rain.
Flydd looked at the ragged, filthy militia, then Jal-Nish’s spit-polished troops on the ridges, surrounding them on all sides. ‘Give your orders, Nish.’
Nish was staring at the red-hot caduceus, and the cracks radiating out from the rock. The grass had burned away for two spans in all directions.
‘I wouldn’t listen,’ he whispered. ‘I’m the biggest fool in the world.’
‘What are you talking about?’ Flydd said impatiently.
‘On the day my ten years in prison were up, Father warned me that Santhenar was in danger from the void, but I refused to believe him. I was sure he was trying to manipulate me.
‘And I did it again when he came to Mistmurk Mountain. He told me that he wanted to atone for all the terrible wrongs he had done. Father begged me for help, and no one can ever know what it cost him – proud, closed-off man that he is – to humble himself before a son who had always disappointed him. I refused him and called him a liar, both times. And both times he was telling the truth.’
‘Jal-Nish is the God of Liars,’ said Flydd, ‘and the price liars pay is that no one believes them when they are telling the truth.’
‘Oh yes,’ yelled Colm. ‘Oh yes, Flydd. How you’re going to rue your lies.’
‘Run to your new master,’ snarled Flydd, hand on the hilt of his jag-sword. ‘Run for your very life, and enjoy the price he pays you, while you can.’
Colm went without looking back. Will Klarm give him Gothryme, Maelys wondered, and will it be worth it? Or will it, as Ketila told him before she died, be far too late, as everything else has been too late for him?
‘Father begged me for forgiveness,’ said Nish, ‘and I rejected him. He wanted my help to atone yet I, who seek redemption for my own failings, callously denied it to him. What kind of a man am I, to play god and refuse Father what he needed most?’
‘You’re human and fallible, like all of us,’ said Flydd.
‘Too fallible. I have made a terrible error of judgment. If I had believed Father,’ said Nish, ‘we wouldn’t be here now. None of this would have happened. The chthonic fire would never have been found, and our world wouldn’t be under threat. He is a monster, but I’m a fool.’
Maelys remembered the white fire spreading across all the southern ice around Noom, and shivered.
‘The tears will take years to master,’ said Yggur. ‘Assuming Klarm can use them at all. He can’t defend the world from the Stilkeen, or the revenants. To save Santhenar we’ve got to defeat Klarm first. Nish, are you all right?’
Nish shook his head, dazedly. ‘I should be glad my father is gone, never to be seen again. Why am I not?’
‘Flesh is flesh and blood is blood,’ said Flydd. ‘The strongest bond of all.’
‘The one I never appreciated until it was gone.’
Tulitine put an arm around him. ‘Remember what I said about Vivimord after his trial at the Maelstrom of Justice and Retribution?’
‘With powerful mancers, one must always see the body,’ said Nish.
‘The future is unwritten. Anything can happen.’
The horn sounded on the ridge, and Klarm’s voice rang out. ‘This is your last chance to surrender.’
Most of the prisoners followed Colm, though a few remained. No one spoke, and not a single man or woman of the militia moved, not even, to Nish’s surprise, the few remaining of Boobelar’s detachment.
‘Very well,’ said Klarm regretfully. ‘You’ve made your choice. Imperial Militia, show them no quarter. Charge!’
The story continues in
Book 3
The Destiny of the Dead
The first chapters of
The Destiny of the Dead
follow
FIRST CHAPTERS OF
THE DESTINY OF THE DEAD
ONE
There’s no way out this time, is there?’ said Maelys, wiping the teeming rain from her eyes.
Nish glanced at her and managed a smile, for she was even grubbier than he was; her small figure was clotted with mud from head to foot. ‘I can’t think of one.’ He rubbed his nose and winced. His battered face was so swollen that he was almost unrecognisable.
It was mid-morning on the Range of Ruin, and everyone had gathered in a ring around him, hoping for a miracle, but it wasn’t going to happen. The enemy held the surrounding ridges, trapping them in a clearing in the forested valley; they had been ordered to take Nish and Maelys alive, and put everyone else to death. All their struggles over the past weeks, and all Nish’s agony, had been for nothing.
He and his Gendrigorean militia had driven themselves to the limit of human endurance to climb the rain-drenched range and reach Blisterbone Pass before his father’s army, and they would have succeeded had their treacherous guide, Curr, not led them astray. The pass was only a league away in a direct line, yet it was as unreachable as the moon, for the enemy’s advance guard had beaten them to it and the rest of that monstrous army could not be far behind.
For supporting Nish and daring to oppose his corrupt father – the God-Emperor Jal-Nish Hlar – the peaceful little nation of Gendrigore was going to be obliterated and its men, women and children taken into slavery. Nish felt responsible, for the Gendrigoreans had not wanted to go to war; he had talked them into coming and now he bitterly regretted it.
Their situation was hopeless, yet he could not give in. During the lyrinx war they had snatched victory from defeat many times, and surely there had to be a way to do it again. But they could no
t win by force of arms, which left only the Secret Art.
‘Flydd?’ Nish said quietly. ‘We really need your help.’
‘What if you made another portal with the mimemule?’ said Maelys, for Flydd had used that little mimicking device to create the portal that had brought her, Flydd and Yggur here.
Xervish Flydd, the mancer who had led humanity to an impossible victory in the war against the lyrinx ten years ago, swayed on his broad feet. Though he had regained some of his lost gift for the Art, he had never been the same after casting that terrible Renewal Spell upon himself almost six weeks ago.
It had replaced his aged and failing body with that of a bigger man in middle age, but Flydd was in constant pain and he seemed meaner, harder and … Nish resisted the thought for as long as he could – less trustworthy. A few minutes ago, Flydd had been gazing at the Profane Tears, Gatherer and Reaper, the source of the God-Emperor’s power, as though he wanted to snatch them for himself.
‘I can’t!’ Flydd said, clutching at his belly. ‘Bringing so many people through that second portal took everything I had, and the aftersickness –’ He doubled up as though he was going to vomit, gagged, and straightened painfully. ‘I don’t have the power to use the mimemule again.’ He looked around blearily. ‘I don’t know this place. What’s our line of retreat?’
‘There isn’t one,’ said Nish. ‘We’re in a valley shaped like a tilted oval bowl. It’s a good league long and half a league wide, and the upper end runs up to the white-thorn peak, the mountain guarding this side of Blisterbone Pass.’
With his sabre, he gestured towards the towering mountain, barely visible through the blinding rain. ‘The upper part of the valley ends at the cliffs; I don’t think anyone could climb them. The enemy holds the ridges to either side of us and they’re bare, rain-washed rock with no cover – we’d never fight our way up. They also guard the only way out, a gorge spanned by a natural arch of stone.’
