The Curse on the Chosen (The Song of the Tears Book 2) (26 page)

Not yet!
she
screamed for the third time.
Not there!

Lightning flashed all around and the entrance to the shadow
realm disappeared, replaced by utter blackness. Flydd felt more pain, worse
than before, but this time it was her pain until her presence completely
separated from him and he felt her spinning away, her control slipping. She was
falling out of the portal, lost, gone.

He rolled over and over in the air. ‘Colm? Maelys?’

No answer. He flashed by a woman’s face,
her
face. She was clawing at a
transparent wall from the other side, and he sensed her terrible anguish.

You’ve failed me, you
fool.

‘And you used me!’ he snapped.

I
saved
you. Do you think I went through all this
so you could leave me behind?

‘What was I supposed to have done differently? Where are
you, anyway?’

He was carried past and did not hear her reply, if she made
one, and she faded from sight. He continued to fall through darkness for a long
time, until, without warning, he went sliding across a smooth, cool surface and
came to a halt not far from Colm. Maelys lay a few paces further on. A small
pool of light bathed them, but beyond it he could see nothing.

‘Are we in the shadow realm?’ whispered Colm.

Flydd rolled onto his back. The floor was black and as hard
and smooth as glass, and he knew where they were though he had never been here
before. It was the place he’d seen in her scrying cup down at the abyssal
flame.

Maelys sat up, holding her dislocated jaw with both hands.
She frowned ferociously, then jerked hard and forced her jaw back into place,
biting back tears of agony.

‘Where are we?’ said Colm, getting up. ‘This doesn’t look
like the shadow realm. Not the way you described it.’

‘I’m dreadfully afraid,’ Flydd said haltingly, ‘that we’ve
ended up in a far worse place.’

‘Where?’ mumbled Maelys.

‘The Nightland.’

‘But,’ said Colm, ‘isn’t that –?’

‘It’s the place where the greatest of all the Charon, Rulke,
was imprisoned for a thousand years, and not even his genius, nor his mancery,
could get him out.’

PART TWO

THE TOWER OF A

THOUSAND STEPS

TWENTY

Save for the roaring green flames, and later the
hissing, spitting white ones, Nish knew little about Vivimord dragging him up
the stairs and halls of Mistmurk Mountain and out onto the plateau. Once there,
Nish saw the zealot glaring at him, and the needle pricks in the back of his
hand stung venomously; he tried to run but his numb feet would not move; he
fell but felt nothing as he hit the ground …

Later he remembered, though distantly, as if through a
spinning hole, Maelys stabbing a curved fang into Vivimord’s back and him
squealing like a pig. Nish would have cheered, had he been able to speak.

His memories of the time after that were equally
fragmentary, for Nish was too dazed by Vivimord’s ensnaring spells. He vaguely
recalled whirling through a black, empty space, then being pushed out into
darkness and smelling the humid odour of rainforest. A river poured over rapids
nearby, and people were talking. The portal was still open nearby; he could
hear air rushing through it all the while.

Later he caught a glimpse of Vivimord, stripped to the
waist, scrubbing frenziedly at the wound in his back. Nish’s burned hand flared
with pain, he gasped and an elderly woman bent over him and spooned something
bitter into his mouth. Her face looked familiar, though he could not remember
where he’d seen her before. She began dressing the burn on his hand …

Two peasants with dirt under their fingernails hauled him to
the portal and he was carried to a stony hilltop where the wind blew wild and
hot, though it was the middle of the night. The old woman was dressing his hand
again, frowning at what she saw and muttering phrases over it. Despite her
efforts it throbbed all the time, save where he’d rubbed Vivimord’s blood into
it. Those patches were cold, prickly and unbearably itchy, but his other hand
was strapped to his chest and he could not scratch.

His wits felt dull; he was unable to follow any train of
thought for more than a minute. The one thing Nish remembered clearly was that
mortifying encounter with Maelys in the bedchamber. He’d thought she wanted
him, and he had certainly desired her, until she broke Vivimord’s enchantment
and escaped. Clearly she, a slip of a girl, was a lot stronger than he was.

‘Maelys,’ he said, not realising that he was thinking aloud,
‘how could I have been so wrong about you?’

‘It’s too late for her!’ the zealot hissed in his ear. ‘She
struck
me, Deliverer; she’s doomed to
the most agonising death-in-life I can come up with.’

Vivimord’s teeth were bared, the blemish on his cheek was a
darker purple than before, and he had a hand pressed to the fang wound. He
winced, then slid his hand under his shirt and across his belly, where the skin
crackled. Every day he seemed to be suffering more, and less able to endure it.

His eyes met Nish’s. ‘The octopede venom makes it so much
harder to bear, and I have no one to salve my ruined skin. Curse her for
robbing me of Phrune as well; curse Maelys for everything.’

Nish didn’t care how much Vivimord suffered – the more
the better – but he thought it wise to hide his feelings. ‘I’m sure the
old healer can soothe –’

‘No
woman
can ease
my pain!’ He pressed the fang wound again, gasped, ‘Blood!’ and turned away.

Nish forgot him instantly, for he was still thinking about
Maelys. After escaping Vivimord’s enchantment she must have killed an octopede,
whatever that was, torn out its fang and tracked Vivimord all the way up to the
obelisk – to save him, Nish? Was there nothing she could not do? She put
his own resolve, his own courage, in the shade.

I can’t fight him, Nish thought despairingly. I haven’t got
the strength any more. He’d lost the moral courage that had previously
sustained him, some time during the decade of his imprisonment, and no matter
how much he fought, no matter how many times he struggled to the surface,
hopelessness always pulled him under again. Like a sot trying to give up the
drink, his resolve would last for a day, a week, even a month, but sooner or
later his self-doubt became insurmountable and the temptation to give up,
irresistible.

Several days after his abduction he was carried from the
gate onto a patch of tough blue grass between two standing stones; a third slab
was precariously angled across them. They were high in a mountain range Nish
did not recognise and the air was mild and dry. The peasants set him in the
shade and the old woman began to change his dressings, muttering a useless
healer’s charm over his hand and
tcching
under her breath. Nish let out a groan of misery, for he’d grown so used to her
that he hardly noticed she was there.

‘What is it, Deliverer?’ she said quietly.

She hadn’t spoken to him before but now he recognised her
voice. She was the old healer who had helped to rally the Defiance to him,
months ago. Nish could not remember her name.

‘I can’t do it. I’ve tried to fight Father and Vivimord, but
I fail every time. Even that victory I had over Father’s army months ago was a
lie.
He let me win
, just to undermine
me even further. I can’t fight on; I’ve got nothing left.’

Her eyes were clouded yet he felt that she saw him clearly.
She looked over her shoulder, laid her seamed hand upon his brow and said
quietly, ‘You must fight him, for the world needs you and only you can save it.
Gather your strength, and I’ll help you when I can.’

Nish couldn’t speak; the offer was as extraordinary as it
was unexpected, and absurd. The healer was a spry old thing but she couldn’t be
far off eighty. She could not take on the mighty, any more than he could.

‘I have a lover younger than you,’ she said with an impish
smile. ‘Don’t tell me what I can or cannot do; don’t even think it.’

He remembered the smile. ‘You were the seer who touched me
that day after we escaped from the labyrinth below Tifferfyte. You helped to
form the Defiance.’

‘Indeed I did; my name is Tulitine, and without me there
would have been no Defiance, for I read you and certified that you were indeed
the son of the God-Emperor. And I convinced the people to rally to you.’

‘In Monkshart’s name,’ he said bitterly. ‘You were either
his servant or his dupe.’

‘Always in
your
name, never in his. I had my doubts about Monkshart then, and subsequent events
have confirmed them, but at the time there was no choice. No one else could
have pulled the Defiance together in time.’

‘And now he’s in charge again.’

‘Only until you’re ready to take control, Nish. The moment
you can find the strength within you, I’ll help you to bring him down.’ She
looked over her shoulder again and lowered her voice. ‘And it may not be long.’

Nish snorted. ‘That time will never come. I’m a hollow man.’

‘With an iron core. It’s a little rusty at the moment, a
trifle bent, yet once you learn to stiffen it, as you had to during the war, it
will support you even in the worst of times. Remember your past, Nish.’

‘That only makes it worse.’

‘Not the heroic past you use to beat yourself with, but the
time before that, when you were a craven youth, a greedy, unpleasant young man
who had to learn to reach for the heights rather than wallow in the mire. Think
about that youth, and remember how he turned himself into a man, and a hero.
And only then, remind yourself of your destiny,
and go after it.
’

She was right. Too often Nish had compared his present
tormented self to the commanding hero he’d been at the end of the war, and
could only see how far he’d fallen. Yet when he thought about the youth he’d
been before the hero – an unhappy prentice artificer in a distant
manufactory, brutally flogged for his crimes – it was clear that he’d
risen a long way. And if he’d done it once, surely he could rise again, if not
by himself as he’d always tried to do in the past, refusing all aid, then with
the help of those allies he had left.

He looked up at her wrinkled old face. ‘You’re right to
chide me, Lady Tulitine –’

‘I am no lady,’ she said with a throaty chuckle, ‘but go
on.’

‘I will do it!’ Nish took her hand and pulled himself
upright on his litter. She did not let go and, with her hand gripping his,
Vivimord’s hold slipped fractionally and he felt a surge of courage.

‘Never again!’ he exclaimed. She raised a white eyebrow.
‘Never again will I succumb to the despair that is my enemy’s closest ally,’
Nish said fiercely. ‘I will pretend to be compliant until I’m ready to strike,
but all the time I will be working to undermine Vivimord and bring him down.
And when he’s gone, I
will
become the
Deliverer, if that’s the only way to topple Father from his throne, but I’ll
only do it on my terms. Yet should I succeed, I will not take his place. I dare
not.’

She looked deep into his eyes, her own cloudy eyes reading
him and gauging his resolve. ‘Yes, you can do it, Nish, and you must, for the
world is in terrible danger, and neither Vivimord nor your father has the power
to save it. You might not succeed; the odds are against you and the fates give
you just one slender chance, but you have to take it. Sleep now; gather your
strength, but give no hint of your resolve. When he comes, pretend that you’re
fully under his enchantment until I say otherwise.’

‘Where is he taking me?’

‘I won’t know until we get there.’

‘What’s happened to Flydd and Colm? And Maelys?’

‘They are in dire peril and I don’t know if they’ll survive.
You can’t depend on them, Nish. It’s all up to you now.’

And she went out.

Nish was taken though the portal twice more, its entry and exit
always in hot lands where the sun stood vertically at midday. They had to be in
the far north of Lauralin, or whatever lands lay beyond it. He was in no hurry
to reach their final destination, for whenever his prickling hand told him that
Vivimord was approaching, Nish found his resolve shrinking to nothing. Only
when the zealot had gone, and Tulitine was close by, could Nish find the
strength to oppose him; to go on.

Finally the portal opened on a sloping hill at the edge of a
sweeping curve of rainforest, and Vivimord stepped through, grimacing and
rubbing his chest. The peasants carried Nish out and Tulitine followed.
Forested mountains lay all around, while down the slope a pocket handkerchief
of cleared land was covered in thick, blue-green grass. A pretty town, its
cottages and meeting hall made of rough-sawn timber, nestled in the curve of a
stream. It was raining gently, but the rain was blood-warm; patches of mist
drifted on the mountain slopes and the air was so thick with humidity that it was
stifling.

Vivimord’s face was creased with pain lines which grew
deeper every day. How much longer could he endure it, Nish wondered, without
Phrune to salve his terrible injuries.

The zealot touched Nish on the forehead. ‘Rise, Deliverer.
You’re safe from your father at last.’

But not from you! ‘Where are we?’ Nish said haltingly,
pretending to be groggy from the enchantment.

‘One of the few places on Santhenar where your father cannot
reach. Or at least, where he has not taken the trouble to do so. The hidden
land of Gendrigore.’

‘Gen-drig-or-ay,’ Nish repeated. ‘Never heard of it.’

‘It lies at the northernmost tip of Lauralin, bracketed
between the cities of Taranta and Fankster. Gendrigore is a peninsula but it
might as well be an island, since the only way to reach it is via the track
across the mighty mountain chain called The Spine, which separates Gendrigore
from Crandor and the rest of Lauralin. This land cannot be approached by sea;
it is entirely surrounded by cliffs, and the currents that race past them are
impossible to navigate. It is equally difficult to come at by flappeter or air
floater on account of the treacherous updraughts, the deadly storms, the
exploding volcanoes and the impenetrable, clinging mists.’