The Curse on the Chosen (The Song of the Tears Book 2) (15 page)

‘Stop him!’ Flydd gasped, barely able to stand up because
his muscles were spasming violently. He slumped onto the base of the altar,
legs kicking.

Colm swung his sword around his head and hurled it viciously
at the fleeing man, but he had already crashed through the double doors and
run. ‘Missed!’

‘He’s gone to warn the God-Emperor of this deadly new
power,’ Flydd said ruefully, as Colm limped after his blade. ‘Curse him.’ He
inspected his swollen fingers, which were covered in little white blisters.

‘How did you do that?’ said Colm as he came back.

‘
I
didn’t.’

 
TWELVE

Maelys was propelled towards the far wall so furiously
that the air whistled around her ears. She threw up her hands in a hopeless
attempt to protect herself, but passed straight through the wall and felt no
more than cold rippling along her body. She slid down a glassy slope, the gown
riding up above her, passed through a circular hole and kept falling.

Splat! She landed hard on something familiarly soft and
slimy-oozy that had to be a mass of swamp creepers, and slid between them up to
her hips. Yuk! They felt even worse on her bare skin. She flailed and kicked
her way out until she lay precariously on top, in danger of slipping back in
with the slightest movement.

As her eyes adjusted, Maelys discovered that she was in a
deep circular stone pit, at least as wide as the bedchamber she’d been ejected
from. Two small pale eyes gleamed five or six spans above her, suspended in the
angle between the domed roof and the wall. The swamp creepers began to squirm
all around her and she drew her legs up towards her stomach, feeling sick.

‘Sweet, sweet revenge!’ Phrune gurgled from on high. His
nauseating face was looking down at her through the circular hole, and he’d
swallowed his intestines, allowing him to speak.

‘This is legitimate retribution,’ Vivimord reminded him. ‘I
was testing you, Maelys, to see if you were suitable for Nish after all. I
really thought you were, for you’re a remarkably clever girl; you’ve thwarted
both me and Jal-Nish, time and again. Had you done what was required of you in
the bed-chamber you would have been pregnant by now, and I would have honoured
you above all other women. But when you broke my enchantment it proved you
could
never
be trusted, and now you’re
going to die in a way that will be a lesson to everyone in my realm.’

‘You have no realm,’ she spat, ‘you murderous lunatic!’

‘Ah, but I will have one, and you will become my first
public exhibit,
and lesson
.’

She could not bear his gloating triumph, nor Phrune’s sick
bloodlust. Maelys looked away but could see no means of escape, for the curved
walls of the pit offered no handholds. Several corded webs hung high above,
well out of reach, and from their faint shimmer they must have been freshly made.
If she touched one, she would be stuck fast;
prey
. That left only one other way out, though it sickened her to
have to beg for her life.

‘Please, give me another chance. I’ll have Nish’s baby … or
anything.’

‘I don’t give
anybody
a second chance,’ said Vivimord, ‘and certainly not you. You’re a threat to the
Deliverer, Maelys Nifferlin, and any one of a thousand pliable girls will
eagerly take your place.’

‘Are you going to leave me here to die?’ she said hoarsely.
Somehow she doubted it.

‘
A lesson to all
,
I said. A public exhibit. Do you see the two pale eyes under the roof?’

Maelys swallowed, but it didn’t help, for her throat was
parchment-dry.

‘It’s a vigorous young octopede,’ Vivimord said with relish,
‘freshly mated and ready to breed. They live on the blood of swamp creepers,
milking them like a herd of cattle, but to reproduce, octopedes need
warm-blooded creatures – or, rather,
hosts
.’

She let out an involuntary cry.

‘After it feels you all over, and paralyses you with its
sting, and does other unspeakable things that you’ll discover soon enough, it
will spear you in the belly with its ovipositor and lay its eggs in you. After
the way you’ve stalked Nish these past months you may find that a trifle
ironic. Once you’ve been
inovulated
,
I’ll take you with me, paralysed but conscious, and make a live exhibit of you
in my court so all the Defiance can see the little octopede grubs hatch –
and feed
.’

Maelys felt paralysed already. She reached up towards him,
to beg for her life, but no sound came forth. She knew it was hopeless.

‘I’ll leave you to your fate, Maelys. Jal-Nish’s army is
close now and I’ve got to keep him away until I can round up your friends. I’m
going to make examples of them too, all save Nish. He’s the key to all our
futures.’

Vivimord withdrew, though dead Phrune remained at the hole
for a few seconds, staring down at her with those empty eyes before, with a
twitch of the head that extruded a white length of entrails, he was gone.

Maelys studied her nemesis. The octopede was far bigger than
her, and had an elongated, squishy body like a long balloon squeezed in two
places. Its white, sagging skin was covered in warty pustules that oozed a
creamy substance. It resembled the skin of a particularly unpleasant toad, and
no doubt the ooze was poisonous. The plump, stubby legs ended in little
clinging hooks while the lance-like tail flicking back and forth must be the
ovipositor with which it would deposit its eggs inside her.

She rubbed her slippery arms, which were covered in goose pimples,
and slid backwards across the swamp creepers. To think she’d been afraid of
them. The enemy of my enemy is my friend; was there any way she could use them?

The octopede’s oval eyes slanted across the front of its
sloping head. A pair of hook-shaped claws were upraised, the pincers opening
and closing rhythmically. It began to creep to the centre of its web, watching
her all the while. The urge to give way to her deep, numbing fear and scream
was almost overwhelming, but she had to resist it. Panic would be fatal.

The beast began to lower itself on a glistening cord
extruded from a ring of spiky spinnerets at its posterior. It was curled into a
semicircle with its ovipositor pointing at her and its hook-claws opening and
closing,
clacker-clack
.

Her throat grew tight as she remembered how fast it had
moved in the bedchamber. It could drop on her, catch her in its claws or spear
her with the ovipositor, but how was she to fight it? She would be hard-pressed
to avoid it; she couldn’t even stand up on the slippery swamp creepers.

She scanned the walls in case she’d missed some means of
escape, but they were solid stone. The only way out was past the octopede,
unless … unless there was a hole down below. Could she burrow down through the
swamp creepers? The thought was revolting, but she checked on the octopede, now
swaying on its web, and knew she had no choice.

She began to take deep breaths as it lowered itself on its
web cord. The swamp creeper gunk felt disgusting but she reminded herself that
they were on her side – they would be shielding her from the common foe.

The octopede uncoiled and dropped sharply on its line, its
plump limbs extending towards her, and the clacking of its hook-claws became
more staccato. Go,
now
! Maelys
upended herself and dived headfirst into the squirming mass of swamp creepers,
clawing them out of the way as she tried to pull herself lower.

It was easy for the first half span, for she slid between
them under her own weight, but below that the swamp creepers were ever more
tightly packed and every hand-span she moved down took a greater effort. As she
clawed at the huge slugs, she imagined the octopede hanging above her exposed
legs, ready to sting.

She pulled them down but a huge swamp creeper jammed under
her knees, leaving her right foot and part of her leg exposed. She heaved
again, her panic rising.

A shocking pain speared through the back of her calf. The
octopede had got her with a hook-claw and Maelys could feel her flesh being
torn. She would have screamed but could not spare the breath.

She wrenched free and dragged herself lower in the squirming
mass. Her calf was a shrieking agony; it felt as though it had been ripped
open. Maelys gasped and lost the last of her air, but if she came up for more
the octopede would be on her instantly. She groped down as far as she could
reach in case there was a hole below her, but felt nothing save more creepers;
creepers everywhere.

Her lungs heaved; she would have to go up. Wait – when
she’d been struggling down the chimney, when she’d tried to punch a swamp
creeper out of the way, she had gained a breath from its air bladder.

Maelys put her mouth to the clotted opening of the nearest
swamp creeper – yuk! – and forced her fist into its middle. Smelly
cow’s breath gushed out and she sucked it down until her lungs were full. The
panic faded, though only a little.

She burrowed deeper then did it again, and again, until she
must have been a span and a half below the surface and the weight of swamp
creepers above her was so great that she could barely inflate her lungs. If she
went any lower she would be crushed to death. She probed and her fingers
touched hard stone – the base of the great well.

It was solid. She rested a moment, trying to ignore the
agony in her calf, then wriggled on, squeezing air out of the nearest swamp
creeper whenever she needed a breath. She criss-crossed the floor but found no
opening; there was no way out from the bottom. Up half a span where the
pressure was blessedly less, she began to move in rising circles around the
sides but discovered no exit there either, even when she’d risen to within a
single swamp creeper of the surface and could breathe unaided again. What was
she to do? Tulitine, she thought, I need your help more than ever.

Maelys had a feeling that the old woman would be proud of
her now, and it made a difference, since her other friends had turned out to be
less than steadfast. Colm was disgusted and contemptuous, Flydd had seemed to
be re-evaluating her, and as for Nish – the incident in the boudoir could
only have reinforced his disdain.

After enduring years of carping criticism from her mother
and aunts, Maelys longed for the approval of people she admired, and none more
than Tulitine, who was old and had neither the mancery of Flydd nor the skill
at arms of Colm, yet possessed an inner strength greater than either of them.
If Tulitine could fight even Vivimord, in her own small ways, Maelys could
overcome this obstacle, and the next.

She eased towards the surface, trying to emulate the random
squirming of the swamp creepers, and felt that she was doing a good job of
concealing herself until the creeper above her head let out a squeaking note of
pain. She looked up to see it hooked out of the way and tossed against the far
wall; the monstrous octopede was hanging directly above, eye to eye with her.

Maelys’s mouth opened in an involuntary scream but she
managed to keep silent; if she once gave in to her fear it would spiral out of
control and that would be the end. She couldn’t get out of the octopede’s way
quickly enough; if she tried it would attack from behind, and once it caught
her with those little foot-hooks she would never get free. Stealthily,
maintaining eye contact all the time, she slid her right hand underneath a
swamp creeper and cocked her arm.

The octopede’s eight plump legs suddenly stood out like
inflated balloons; it was going to strike. Maelys hurled the swamp creeper up
at it with all the strength she had, so hard that it wrenched her shoulder.

As the octopede flashed down, the swamp creeper struck it on
the head, knocking it sideways into the wall. Ignoring the throb in her
shoulder, Maelys scooped up another swamp creeper and, as the octopede swung
back, spinning in a circle, she aimed for its web cord.

The swamp creeper bounced off but the tough web did not
break; the octopede began to spin the other way as it swung across the pit. Its
two hook-claws were extended, ready to attack the moment it came within range.

Maelys wriggled into a vertical position, trying to get a
firmer footing on the mass of swamp creepers lower down so the ones around her
legs would hold her upright and give her more leverage. A huge swamp creeper
was squirming to her left, the biggest she’d seen so far. Did she have the
strength to throw it? Her shoulder was shrieking and suddenly she felt very
weak, but she had to fight that too. One last try.

She held the swamp creeper on the flat of her palm, hanging
over each end like a monstrous slug; and being so slimy they were hard to throw
straight. She hurled it at the octopede’s middle; it flew straight for once,
and knocked it right off its cord.

It landed on its back on the swamp creepers and began to
rattle its claws furiously, struggling to turn over on the slimy surface. The
swinging web cord passed by and Maelys knew it was her lifeline out of here, if
she could climb it.

It was just within reach, but she was so coated with mucus
she wouldn’t be able to get a grip. She rubbed her hands against the gritty
stone wall until the slime was gone and, as the cord swung back, stretched as
high as she could reach, caught hold with her right hand, and stuck fast. Web
cord was sticky to anything but an octopede.

It was still trying to turn over, and would soon succeed,
for it had impaled a swamp creeper on its ovipositor and was using it for
leverage, skidding on its back across the surface. If it came close enough, it
could attack with either ovipositor or hook-claws.

She didn’t try to pull free; that wasn’t going to work. With
her left hand, she scraped muck off her arm, slid her hand in under the stuck
fingers, prised and prayed.