The Curse on the Chosen (The Song of the Tears Book 2) (18 page)

‘That’s it.’ With each turn of the steps Flydd felt the
strength drain out of him, as if he were heaving it up with his own muscles. He
slumped to his knees. ‘That’s her escape route.’

But were they supposed to go up, or down? The ceiling
opening was dark; whatever lay in the depths was equally indeterminate.

‘Jump through the flame!’ shouted the plume-helmed officer.
‘Take them!’

The leading soldiers hesitated on the other side of the ring
of fire. It was not a difficult leap, had it not been for the uncanny flame,
but no doubt they’d heard of Flydd’s singing blade and no one wanted to be
first to feel it.

‘Take them, you stinking dogs,’ the officer bellowed.

A group of soldiers moved forwards, slowly and uneasily.
Colm was panting raggedly and did not know where to look, for the maddening
flames were all around.

‘Do what you like, Flydd. I’m going up.’

Head down, covering his eyes, he stumbled onto the rotating
stair, whose blade-sharp apex was already six coils above them and slowly
rising.

Oddly, though, the rising treads did not carry him up with
them, and he began to lurch up the steps. Fresh blood stained his shoulder
where he’d been cut during the fight that had killed Zham; the wound had broken
open again.

Flydd put his knife to the flame and felt the remaining
strength being drawn from his own bones, though the knife remained mute. He
backed towards the stair. Three soldiers ran towards him, attempting to leap
the annulus of flame together; if they got through he was a dead man. He held
up the useless blade and made a humming sound in his throat.

The officer laughed mockingly. ‘The blade isn’t working and
he’s got no Art. He’s helpless.’

The running soldiers hit the flame but were hurled back,
statue-stiff. Another man checked them. ‘They’re dead, surr. Stone-dead!’

Flydd took no heart from it; it wouldn’t take the battle
mancers long to find a way across. His body felt worse than before: exhausted
and ill-fitting. As he dragged himself up the steps, three more soldiers crept
forwards, raised the statue-like corpses to the vertical and toppled them
across, attempting to form a body bridge. Two fell into the depths but the
third body spanned the gap. The living soldiers were flung backwards, as stiff
as their fellows, however another three soldiers threw the bodies across the
gap. This time two spanned it, and only one of the living fell.

A soldier tried to walk the body bridge but fell onto the
dead men and lay there, legs dangling off to the left, arms hanging to the
right. Unlike the others, he was still alive and twitching, but unable to move.
Not far away, a dozen soldiers waited their turn, fearful yet eager to get the
reward for Flydd’s head.

He continued up to the tenth turn of the stairs, where he
looked down into the slowly widening annulus of fire. Something green and black
swelled and pulsed in the depths. The stair was still rising, though he could
not see what was supporting it. Previously, the abyssal flame had begun at the
top of the altar, but its base was creeping ever lower into the subterranean
abysses, feeding on itself. What would happen when it got to the bottom? You
don’t want to find out.

He was halfway to the ceiling, some twenty turns of the
staircase above the floor, when he stumbled, missed the step and nearly went
over. The first of the soldiers had crossed the bridge and was on the stair,
climbing more quickly than he could. He searched the flame for another of those
glimmering bubbles that had been so helpful before, but could not see any.

Previously he had created them with the taphloid. As he
reached out to the flame with it, it swung against his wrist and its touch was
like boiling lye; a little circle of skin blistered before his eyes. The
soldiers were coming up rapidly now, their swords out. He had the advantage of
height, though it did not nullify the greater reach of their weapons.

Flubber-flub
. It
came sweeping in through the open doors, banked and curved towards the flame
– an entirely new creature-construct of Jal-Nish’s, something he’d never
heard of before. It was like a flying wing – no, more like one of the
stingrays Flydd had seen gliding through the shallow water of the bay where
he’d played as a child, so many years ago. It was slate-green with a broad,
arrow-shaped head, the mouth opening on its underside; its delta-shaped wings
stretched out a good span and a half to either side, and it had a whip-like
tail plus an erectile sting which lay along its backbone.

Another followed it, and a third, flying with sinuous
undulations of their leathery wings, though such heavy creatures must also be
using the Art to keep themselves aloft. They didn’t look particularly
dangerous, yet if one perched at the top of the stairs he would not be able to
pass.

Was this the way out, or had he missed something? He swung
the taphloid through the flame.
Bubbles,
come!
It was a cry of desperation, but he’d also commanded the flame as
though it was his right to do so – no, her right – and a series of
small bubbles rose up towards him.

‘Mancers, destroy them!’ shouted the plumed officer.

A small, cloaked figure in the doorway pointed at the
bubbles with his right hand and they popped one by one before Flydd could read
anything in them. At first, Flydd thought the mancer was Jal-Nish, but it was
not wearing a mask, and it was far shorter – a dwarf of a man, in fact.
He reeled.

‘No! It can’t be.’

‘Who is it?’ said Colm, who was just a few steps above now,
watching the wing-rays warily. He was still breathing heavily, though the panic
had receded. The wing-rays were circling the top of the stairs, blocking the
way. Flesh-formed creatures as they were, they seemed immune to the flames.

‘I know that little man.’ Flydd clung to the treads above
him as his knees buckled. ‘He was a great friend once; an unshakeable ally; a
masterly mancer and one of the bravest men I’ve ever met.’

The soldiers were still climbing towards them, but the dwarf
stopped them with a hand gesture and Flydd made out a brassy glint in his fist.

‘Come down, Xervish.’

The dwarf came forwards with that characteristic rolling
gait, like a sailor walking the deck of a heaving ship. He was a handsome man
with a leonine mane of hair that was as thick and full as when Flydd had last
seen him ten years ago, though there were grey streaks in it now. He looked
distinguished, from the neck up.

His voice put the matter beyond doubt, for it was rich,
throaty and cheerful. He was Klarm, once known as the dwarf scrutator, and he
had gone over to the enemy. It was one of the most bitter blows Flydd had ever
suffered.

‘I thought I knew you, Klarm,’ said Flydd. It took all his
strength to keep his voice steady. ‘Clearly, I never did.’

‘I haven’t changed,’ said Klarm. ‘There was no point in
being a powerless renegade, snapping uselessly at the God-Emperor’s ankles. The
war was won ten years ago –’

‘The war was lost the day Jal-Nish came back from the dead
in his air-dreadnought, and you know it.’

‘Whatever you say, Xervish, but he controls the world, and
all the Arts now –’

‘Not this one!’

Klarm stared at the column of flame, now roaring ever higher
and buffeting the wing-rays aside, and Flydd thought he saw a momentary unease
in his old friend’s eyes, before Klarm went on.

‘– and there’s nothing to be gained by fighting him.
It behoves those of us who have mastered the Arts to use them for the world’s
betterment. Surely you can see that?’

‘I see only a former friend who sold out for the basest of
motives,’ Flydd said thickly.

He did not want to believe his eyes, for if Klarm had gone
over to the enemy, could
anyone
be
trusted? This was unbearable. It was one thing to lose dear friends to the war,
cut down in their prime; that was one of life’s inevitable tragedies. But for a
former friend to willingly serve their most bitter enemy shook Flydd’s faith in
human nature, not to mention his own judgment.

‘You judge me,’ said Klarm, ‘yet you know nothing about my
life these past years.’

‘You’re right. I do judge you, and I find you wanting, but
I’ll finish that debate when I have you at my mercy,
traitor
.’

The dwarf raised his right hand and Flydd saw that brassy
glint again. Klarm rarely used rod or staff, wand or crystal; his favoured
device was a little brassy object he called a knoblaggie. No one else employed
such a device and Flydd had never fathomed how it worked, which might turn out
to be a fatal weakness.

‘It gives me ten times the power of before, Xervish,’ said
Klarm. ‘And you’ve lost most of your Art. You can’t resist me. Come down.’

Flydd noticed another silvery bubble rising on the side of
the ring of flame furthest from Klarm. It was so small that he might not notice
it, though the dwarf was amazingly competent in everything he did, and his keen
eyes missed little. Flydd had to distract him; had to keep him talking.

‘What mighty position has he given you,
old friend
?’ he shouted down, looking away from the bubble, not
much bigger than a grape, that was slowly coiling upwards in the flame. ‘Did
you take over as his chief lieutenant when Vivimord left him? I know how you
crave power.’

It was a lie intended to provoke; Klarm had been the best of
men to serve with, for he had never been ambitious for himself. His greatest
pride had been to do whatever job he had been tasked with to the best of his
abilities.

‘You know me better than that, Xervish.’ Klarm scanned the
flames but the bubble was concealed in a fiery green knot. ‘A position was
offered but I did not take it; I’m a mancer, not a governor.’

And a very good mancer, better than Flydd himself, in some
respects. How much more had Klarm learned from Jal-Nish and the tears while
Flydd had been trapped on Mistmurk Mountain? Just for a second, he envied him.

The bubble was stationary now, well out of reach, and he
could not draw on it from so far away. He had to keep Klarm talking.

‘If only he could have trusted you,’ said Flydd, ‘he might
have made you second only to himself, for you’re a man of rare qualities. But
the God-Emperor fears rivals, and he knows that a man who has turned his coat
once will do so again,
when the price is
right
.’

‘I did not turn my coat.’ Klarm showed that Flydd had
nettled him only by a slight stiffening of the spine, a small man trying to
appear taller. No one else would have picked it, but Flydd had known Klarm for
a very long time. ‘I only accepted his offer after he controlled the world and
all resistance had ended.’

The bubble was moving up again. ‘And the remaining traitors,
your former friends
,’ Flydd sneered,
‘rounded up. You must be pleased to know that the job is done. How many pieces
of gold will he pay you for my head?’

‘I’ve never served for love of gold; you know that too. I
wish there could have been another way, Xervish, for I love my friends even
when they’ve done wrong. But I love duty more and, having sworn to the
God-Emperor I cannot do otherwise than honour my oath. You would have done the
same, had our positions been reversed.’

Klarm spoke truly; in the long decades of the war, Flydd had
often been forced to choose, and every time he’d come down on the side of duty
rather than friendship. A great leader could do no less, and when there had
been no choice but to sacrifice a friend to the greater good, he’d done it. It
had always left a bad taste in his mouth afterwards, but the war had to be won.
Losing it had been unthinkable, for that would have meant the end of humanity
on Santhenar.

‘Which capture gave you the greatest pleasure, Klarm?’ said
Flydd, bursting with frustration at the slow rise of the bubble. If he
continued to taunt the dwarf, he might reveal something about the fate of their
friends. ‘Who got away that day, apart from you?’

In his mind’s eye Flydd relived those last frantic moments
after Klarm had engineered their escape and they’d bolted across the town
square to steal Jal-Nish’s undefended air-dreadnought. Flydd had got there
first, along with Yggur, Fyn-Mah and General Troist. Flangers, that noble,
troubled warrior, came next, with Klarm gasping at his side, his little legs
going three strides to Flangers’s one.

But Nish, well behind them, had been struck down, and
Irisis, who never forgot a friend, turned back to help him, knowing she was
dooming herself.

‘You remember what happened as well as I do,’ said Klarm,
‘and you’re trying to find out if there were any other survivors. I’m telling
you nothing.’

Curious, Flydd thought. He doesn’t parrot the God-Emperor’s
line,
every one of your old allies is
dead
. Was Klarm afraid to lie to Flydd in case he picked it? Could someone
else have survived? He felt his eyes pricking at the thought; oh, to not have
to fight the God-Emperor all alone.

Klarm’s eyes narrowed; he was no longer looking at Flydd,
but just below him. The bubble, which had grown a little, was clearly visible
now. Klarm threw out his arm, the knoblaggie glinting in his fist, but Flydd
was quicker. Lunging, he snatched the bubble out of the air, and felt the most
terrifying pain he had ever experienced.

 
FOURTEEN

Maelys swung across onto the roof of the swamp-creeper
pit, fell into thick dust and lay there, unable to move. Climbing the
octopede’s web cord for the second time had been like hauling herself up a
thousand-span-high cliff. Every bone ached, every muscle burned; her torn calf
was shrieking and she was shaking uncontrollably. She rolled over onto her
back, eyes shut, reliving the nightmare. It had been even worse than Phrune’s
attempt to skin her alive at the cursed flame.