The Curse on the Chosen (The Song of the Tears Book 2) (19 page)

But it made no difference to the smouldering knot of
determination inside her. No one got away with abusing her the way Vivimord
had. He must be stopped, and there was only one way to do that. For someone as
gentle and soft-hearted as Maelys, it was a life-changing revelation. Vivimord
had to die.

She’d gone a little way down this path months ago, when
Seneschal Vomix had pursued her through the labyrinth below Tifferfyte. At one
stage she’d had him at her mercy, but she could not bring herself to cut down a
helpless man, monster though he was. Look what had come from that failure.

This time, if she got the chance, she would kill Vivimord,
and
Phrune, no matter the consequences.
She had no idea how to make Phrune die permanently, but she was going to find
out. And she’d better get going; Vivimord could come back at any moment.
Jal-Nish was hunting her too, to take her back so she could incubate his little
grub of a grandchild – or so he thought. And he’d better not discover
otherwise.

She rolled over, and it hurt, but no amount of pain was
going to stop her. Maelys came to her hands and knees and began to crawl up the
glassy slope. Time passed in a daze; she could not have said whether the
journey to the boudoir wall had taken ten minutes or ten hours. She could think
of nothing save what she was going to do when she got to the top.

When she touched the wall she’d been thrown through, it
shivered like the surface of a pool and her hand slipped in. She eased forwards
until her eyes crossed the cool barrier. The bedchamber was empty.

Maelys crawled in. Apart from the rumpled covers and
scattered flakes of dried swamp-creeper slime, like the stuff she was covered
in now, there was no sign that anyone had been here. She could not see the
octopede either – perhaps it was the one she’d killed below. Her feet
still burned from contact with its innards.

Desperately thirsty, she dragged herself into the bathing
chamber, clambered up into the tulip tub and lay in the water with her mouth
open. Her injured calf throbbed, but she did not move. She could not.

Eventually the cold roused her; Maelys scrubbed the last of
the octopede entrails off her inflamed skin and felt better. She slid to the
floor, only then realising that she was in her old clothes; Vivimord’s
temporary enchantment had exhausted itself. She could not find her boots
though.

She tore a strip of cloth off her shirt, bandaged her calf,
went out into the bedchamber and headed for the door, barefoot, but it was no
longer visible; the walls were completely blank. She wanted to scream, yet only
cold logic was going to get her out.

Nish’s rapier lay near where the door had been. The weapon
was far too long for her, and unwieldy, but at least it was light. How to find
the way out? The door must be hidden by illusion, and Maelys knew that
illusions cost power for as long as they were maintained. Therefore, since he
knew her to be trapped, why waste his strength on unnecessary detail? And if
this illusion was designed to deceive the eye, could she break it by using
another sense? Touch, say?

Closing her eyes, Maelys ran the tip of the rapier across
the wall where the door should be. It made a loud scraping sound, but she had
to take that risk. After covering many spans of wall, the tip slipped into an
invisible crack. She felt it with her fingers. It ran vertically; it had to be
the edge of the door.

By sliding the rapier tip up and down in the crack she found
the latch, and when she pushed hard on it, it slid in silently and the door
came ajar. At once she heard the hiss of the abyssal flame, and raised voices
coming from a distance. Extinguishing the wall lights, she cracked the door
open. The altar was gone, the flame chamber now brightly lit by a vast
doughnut-shaped ring of green-black fire soaring up towards the ceiling, though
her doorway lay in the shadow of a nearby column.

A pleasant, fruity voice spoke. Maelys went very still, for
the room was full of Imperial Militia, plus several battle mancers and one of
the God-Emperor’s black-robed scriers. An all-seeing wisp-watcher was mounted
on his back, its blind eye turning this way and that. Maelys felt a rush of
fear, for the sight brought back those terrible times from her childhood,
hiding in the ruins of Nifferlin Manor while the searchers tramped back and
forth, dragging away cousins, uncles and aunts, never to be seen again, and
drawing ever closer to her family’s miserable hiding place.

She shook her head, put childhood behind her and eased back
through the door, for the soldiers encircled the flame and were pressing
steadily in. The men facing her across the circle might see her if she moved.

‘Come down, Xervish. There’s no escape from here.’

The voice belonged to a tiny robed mancer, a handsome dwarf
with swept-back hair. Flydd was trapped halfway to the ceiling on a coiling set
of steps arising from the centre of the fiery ring, and Colm was further up.
Maelys couldn’t see Nish or Vivimord.

A plumed officer shouted orders and the circle of soldiers
closed on the flame. Maelys pulled the door shut. There were too many of them;
there was nothing she could do.

She bit down on a momentary despair; she had to be even
stronger. From outside there came a boom, a fizzing whip-crack, a series of
roars and the sound of pounding feet. Had she been discovered? She stood to one
side of the door, holding the rapier out.

No one came through; after a couple of minutes the sounds
died away and she forced herself to open the door. The flame chamber was empty,
though the fiery annulus roared higher and brighter and louder than before, and
it was growing every minute. The floor shook with its fury and an ominous crackling
came from the depths.

The annulus had been bridged by the rigid bodies of many
soldiers, but as it slowly widened they were falling into the deep. She put her
head around the column. The chamber was so brightly lit that she could see into
the furthest corners. Dead men lay scattered across the floor, including two
lying in a red heap at the base of the stairs – Flydd and Colm?

Her throat went dry. They could not have been killed so
quickly, so easily – could they? Maelys had to restrain herself from
running across.

A furtive movement caught her eye, high above, and she was
glad she had not moved, for it was Vivimord, right at the top of the stair. As
he heaved someone off onto a platform through a small gap in the flame, the
illusion he’d used to conceal himself must have slipped momentarily. And the
man he was dragging, slumped over and barely able to walk, was Nish.

Maelys could not forget the awful despair she’d seen in
Nish’s eyes as Vivimord had compelled him to come to the bed earlier. It had
moved her, for she had seen into Nish’s soul, into the torment of a man
struggling to overcome his own demons and do what he believed was right, yet
forced to a base act by a stronger foe. He must still be under the compulsion.

She wasn’t game to go out the double doors; Jal-Nish was
bound to have left guards, or a scrier with a wisp-watcher. Vivimord
disappeared into a tunnel high above and Maelys, quaking, knew she had to
follow him now or lose him and Nish. She crept out into the flame light, feeling
as though a target was painted on her back.

First she had to cross the corpse bridge, and she’d better
be quick. Only three statue-stiff soldiers remained and, as she approached, the
annulus widened, sending the shortest of the three tumbling headfirst into the
crack. The body next to him wasn’t much taller; it must soon follow.

She checked again, but could not see anyone alive. She crept
towards the bridge, repelled by the idea of walking across men’s bodies. It
seemed so callous, but there was no other way across. She stared at the
crumpled remains at the foot of the steps. Could they be Flydd and Colm? There
was so much blood she couldn’t tell.

The dead soldier on the right only rested on his helm and
boot heels and she dared not put any weight on him; with the annulus creeping
ever outwards, they would both end up in the abyss. The body on the left was
much taller; his head and shoulders rested on solid stone, though the green
flame licked up on either side, and occasional tongues of fire wisped up between
his legs. It looked more dangerous than the cursed flame and she was really
afraid of it.

Taking a deep breath, she stepped onto his shins. Had the
flame killed the poor fellow?

It was hot above the flame; not as hot as normal fire, but
still uncomfortable. She stepped carefully across onto his marble-hard belly,
swayed and nearly threw her arms out into the flame. The annulus widened
another ell and the soldier’s helm made a scraping sound as it slipped on the
floor. Now he was only supported by the back of his head and his boot heels.
Maelys froze, afraid to move in case it toppled him, but even more afraid of
remaining where she was.

She was gauging how much of his helm remained on solid stone
when his eyes opened. Maelys’s knees went so weak that she nearly toppled off.
He wasn’t dead, just petrified; maybe none of the soldiers making up the bridge
had been dead.

He was a handsome young man, no older than her nineteen
years, and he was staring up at her with pleading eyes. His full lips parted and
he whispered, ‘Help me.’

Maelys felt a pang in her heart. For all his size he was no
more than a boy, but even had he been her best friend, he was twice her weight
and she could not save him. He was going to die.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, avoiding his eye. ‘There’s nothing I
can do.’

As she took another sliding step onto his chest, Maelys
heard his helm slip. She swayed wildly, left then right, and her right hand
went into the flame. The prickly warmth of it ran up her arm, and it fell
leadenly to her side. The paralysis, or petrification, began to creep down her
right side and up her neck. She could feel herself stiffening and knew she
would not be able to stay upright much longer. She tried to move, but couldn’t.

The paralysis crept across her chest and belly, which grew
hard; she felt sick, faint and weak. The octopede’s curving fang grew burning
hot as she became icy cold wherever she’d felt the creeping paralysis, then
suddenly it was gone.

It had to be the fang: perhaps the octopede had spent so
long in the abyssal flame chamber that it was immune to its effects. The young
soldier’s helm scraped again; he couldn’t last long. Her next step should have
been onto his face, for she was afraid to stretch too far in case she pushed
him in, but she couldn’t bear to walk on those pleading eyes.

‘Please help me,’ he whispered, but she stepped over him
onto the floor and kept going, and did not look back even when his helm slipped
the rest of the way and he fell to his death with a gasping, boyish wail.

The steps had been reduced to a ragged skeleton of stone
that might collapse at any moment. What Art could have eaten them away? They’d
been solid when she’d looked out the door not long before.

She had to force herself to inspect the two blood-drenched
corpses, and then to pull the locked bodies apart. Her heart was racing as she
exposed their faces, but she did not recognise either of them. Did that mean
Flydd and Colm had escaped, or had they been taken away? She looked up but
there was no way to tell, and if the soldiers had taken them, there was nothing
she could do about it. That made her decision simpler; she would go up, after
Vivimord.

Further up, a pair of soldiers were jammed into the tread of
a step that was just a skeleton of stone. There was blood everywhere, still
oozing from the base of the step and from one severed, dangling arm, though
their bodies were incomplete. The rest had fallen through. Eyes averted, Maelys
climbed around them, clinging to the ribbons of stone which were all that
remained of the stair. The floor began to shake in circular motions that made
her feel seasick, and the skeleton stair wobbled with every quake, shedding
flakes of rock like confetti.

She scrambled up and up, knowing that there was virtually
nothing holding the stairs together; its stony skeleton could fall apart at any
moment. She forced herself on, afraid she was walking into a trap but having
nowhere else to go.

The flame roared in a great ring around her. It was licking
across the ceiling now, and charred lengths of octopede web plus flakes of
swamp-creeper crust began raining down. What was up there? She couldn’t tell;
everything shimmered with heat haze.

She reached the top and saw an upcurving ledge through the
flame. Dark entrances ran off it, to left and right. She would have to jump
through the flame onto the ledge and hope she survived paralysis, for the stair
was about to collapse and she could not go down. Maelys eyed the roaring flame,
worked her legs up and down a couple of times in practice, and sprang.

A blast of heat, then instantaneous and total paralysis
struck her. She landed stiffly on the ledge, hitting her knee and the side of
her head. She felt nothing through the numbness, though it was going to hurt
once it wore off. She lay there, growing even colder, and afraid she would
never move again.

The fang began to burn and the paralysis faded, though not
as quickly as before, nor as completely. The power of the fang must be
exhausted and she’d better not touch the flame a third time.

She got up, aching all over, sniffed her away around until
she picked up the faint odour of Vivimord, then hobbled after him into the
darkness, holding the rapier out in front of her.

The mere thought of him made her heart race and her fury
rise in a hot wave. Just let him try and take her now. Just let him try.

 
FIFTEEN

Flydd, who was lying on his back on the steps with Colm
staring down at him, realised that he’d screamed. Every bone ached, his teeth
felt loose and the hand that had grasped the bubble was strangulation-purple.
The bubble had burst, though before that he’d been looking out through eyes not
his own, at something happening far away. The body he’d been clothed in had,
unmistakeably, been that of a woman, and the transition had really hurt. But
what had she been looking at? He couldn’t make sense of it.