The Curse on the Chosen (The Song of the Tears Book 2) (40 page)

‘It’s gone!’

The box was full of earth, ash and charcoal. He shook it out
and crumbled it on the floor, raking through the little pile with his fingers,
over and over and over, desperately sifting it ever finer, but of the scrolls
and precious items they’d seen in the shadow play, nothing remained save a few
crumbling fragments of charred parchment and an empty leather pouch.

‘We’ve been robbed, Ketila.’ Colm’s fingers clawed at the
dirt.

‘No, Colm. Just you,’ she said quietly.

‘I would have shared everything with you. I told you that.’

‘Our tainted heritage destroyed Mother and Father. They had
given up long before the lyrinx took Fransi, and they were glad to die with
her, even though it left
me
all
alone. I don’t want any part of our heritage. All I want is my brother back.’

‘Poor, penniless and miserable,’ he choked. ‘A stinking,
unwashed peasant who can never hope for more.’

‘All your life you’ve festered about your inheritance,’ she
said sharply, ‘and if you’d got it when you were young, you might have been
happy, but it’s too late now. Even if you do recover it, you’ll be consumed by
bitterness. I never expected anything, but now I’ve got you back my life is
complete.’

‘Is there anything else?’ said Colm. ‘Try the bracelet
again.’

‘There’s nothing,’ Flydd said quickly. ‘You’ve got it all.’

‘A lousy broken box!’

Outside, there was the sound of a stick breaking. Maelys,
who was closest to the door, looked out. ‘Just a dead branch falling off a
tree, but …’

‘The enemy won’t be far away,’ said Colm in a dead voice.
‘We should have run while we had the chance. You’re right, Ketila – this
hopeless dream has consumed my life, and now it’s probably betrayed us.’ He
stalked to the doorway, put his hands around his mouth and bellowed, ‘I
renounce my heritage, every last stinking crumb of it!’ He turned to Ketila,
his once handsome mouth twisted. ‘There; it’s done. Come on.’

She caught his arm. ‘I know every ell of this valley, and
the two valleys on either side. We can still escape them.’

As she pulled her tall brother out the door, the bracelet
oscillated down her arm and Maelys noticed a tiny shimmer on the floor in the
darkest part of the cave. She started towards it. Outside, Ketila’s and Colm’s
footsteps dwindled down the slope.

‘Xervish?’ Maelys said. ‘Did you see that?’

‘Shh! I did. Be careful.’

She squatted down, and where she’d seen the shimmer, the top
of something round just protruded above the dirt. She was about to prise it out
when Flydd threw himself at her, knocking her out of the way.

‘Don’t touch it.’ He stood over the round object, legs
spread, breathing heavily.

‘What is it?’ she whispered.

‘I–don’t–know.’

He bent over, rather red in the face, and began to excavate
the object from the hard-packed earth with one of the splintery strips of wood
from the box. It looked like a dirty, rudely carved wooden knob or ball, about
the size of an orange. ‘Grab that leather pouch we saw earlier.’

She fetched it for him, and when the ball was fully exposed
on a little pinnacle of dirt he scooped it up in the leather pouch, pulled the
drawstring and slipped the pouch into his pocket.

‘I’ll give Colm a yell.’ She went to the entrance.

He caught her arm and dragged her back roughly, hissing in
her ear, ‘Don’t say a word about it.’

Maelys pulled free and stared at him, shocked. ‘It’s
valuable, isn’t it?’

‘I think it’s a
mimemule
,
and if it is, it’s more valuable than everything that was stolen.’

‘What’s a mimemule?’

He shook his head. He wasn’t going to tell her.

‘But – it’s Colm’s,’ she said.

‘He renounced his heritage,’ said Flydd, breathing hard. ‘That
makes it treasure trove, and finders keepers.’

‘You didn’t find it; I did.’

‘But you didn’t take it, Maelys.’

‘You said not to touch it.’

‘And you didn’t, so now it’s mine.’

Maelys searched his grim face, trying to understand. That
unnerving gleam she’d seen once or twice previously was back in his eyes, and
she remembered him telling Colm, hastily, that there was nothing else here. Had
he done so deliberately? Had he set all this up, even come here intending to
take the treasure if he could? Surely not, unless she didn’t know him at all.
‘You can’t do this to Colm. It’ll destroy him.’

‘Oh, yes I can. Why do you think I came here?’

‘I
thought
you
came to help Colm.’

‘I came in search of a weapon against the great enemy, and
this might help me to find one. Colm can’t use it anyway – it’s steeped
in the Art of another world and he’s quite talentless.’

‘But he could sell it and buy Gothryme back.’

‘This can’t be sold,’ Flydd said hoarsely. ‘Not ever. It’s
mine now, and you’re not to say a word about it. Hush!’ He put his foot over
the hole in the floor and took her arm again.

Heavy footsteps approached the cave and Colm appeared. ‘Will
you come on! Ketila knows a safe way out.’ He looked from Flydd to Maelys,
frowning. ‘What’s the matter?’

‘Just a minor disagreement about how to proceed,’ Flydd
said, crushing her wrist warningly, ‘but we’ve sorted it out now.
Haven’t we, Maelys?
’

Flydd wasn’t a greedy man – at least, the old Flydd
hadn’t been – and surely he had a good reason for keeping the mimemule.
Such an enigmatic old device, made long ago by one of the greatest of all
masters in the Art, might be deadly in the wrong hands. It would certainly be
useless to Colm, who did not have any trace of a gift, and she understood that
such a perilous device should never be sold for mere money, so why did she have
the feeling that Flydd was, essentially, stealing it?

Furious at the position he’d put her in, she nodded stiffly.
After Colm went out, she said, ‘I feel as though I’ve aided and abetted a
common thief.’

His head snapped up. ‘If that’s what you think, little
Maelys,’ he said coldly, ‘you’d better watch your back. You never know what a
common thief
might do next.’

She followed him out, her faith in humanity shaken. Ketila
was several spans up a crevice in the cliff and Colm was starting up after her.

‘Where are we going?’ said Colm.

‘The Island of Noom.’ Flydd’s tone was like a death knell.

‘Isn’t that –’ began Ketila.

‘It lies in the frozen southern wastes,’ said Flydd, ‘but if
I can find the right place to make a portal we won’t have to walk
all
the way.’

‘What are you looking for?’

‘A lookout on a ridge top, with a clear view in all
directions, and no trees or upstanding rocks between us and the horizon. Do you
know such a place?’

‘Yes,’ said Ketila, ‘though it won’t be easy to get to.’

‘There’s no choice. I’ve never been to Noom, so to make a
portal there I need the perfect starting point.’

They climbed the crevice, turned left along the slope, then
into a crack running up the higher cliff. Maelys’s feelings of dread were
growing ever stronger, for in the back of her mind she could feel the rhythmic
beating of Rurr-shyve’s feather-rotors. Surely that meant the flappeter was
close, and because they had once been linked in the contract between flappeter
and rider, it might be using that link to find her.

‘They’re nearly here,’ she said in a choked gasp. Nothing
made sense any more. Flydd had stolen Colm’s heritage and she was supposed to
go along with it. Right and wrong no longer seemed to have a clear meaning.

At the top of the crack Ketila scuttled along a narrow path
near the edge of the cliff, weaving between tussocks of razor grass which
stabbed at Maelys’s knees through her pants. To her left was a sheer drop of
some fifty spans onto broken rock, and every time she looked down her heart
lurched and she imagined those poor soldiers in the fog, lured to their deaths.
It was so horrible she couldn’t bear to think about it, but the memory of the
bones kept it in her mind.

And Faelamor had killed them: the same Faelamor who had
owned the mimemule Flydd had stolen from Colm. Had she used it to create that
illusion? If she had, it must be tainted by all those deaths. What sort of a
person would kill two thousand men just to teach their masters a lesson?

Ahead, the cliff ran out in an overhang like a thick lower
lip, after which it curved around to the right in a tangle of razor grass and
thorny shrubbery at the base of the higher cliff.

‘Up there!’ Ketila headed towards a barely visible cleft.

Maelys plodded after her. Flydd crouched low and went to the
edge of the overhang. ‘I can see the whole valley from here.’

‘Be careful,’ said Ketila over her shoulder. ‘You can be
seen, too.’

Flydd flattened himself further. ‘A column of troops has
just turned the corner below Faelamor’s cave – I can see them against the
white rocks. We’ve got to go faster.’

They scrambled up the cleft and onto the sharp white spine
of the limestone ridge. To the right, the land dropped steeply into the
adjacent valley, but they weren’t going there. The meandering ridge crest was
broken by a series of steep pinnacles and Ketila was making for the tallest of
these, a square-sided pyramid which stood a good fifty spans higher than any
other. If its top was the only place suitable for making a portal to Noom, they
had to reach it, though Maelys felt desperately afraid. The sides were
precipitous and it would be a dangerous climb, even if they had all the time in
the world. They had to get to the top before the enemy came within range, for
on the climb they would be exposed and helpless.

They went up the south face, the steepest of the four but
the easiest, for a winding crevasse ran into the limestone, just wide enough
for them to inch up. Ketila went first, since she’d climbed it before. Colm
followed, then Flydd, slow because of his back wound, and Maelys last.

A
thup-thup
came
out of nowhere and the male flappeter shot overhead, carrying a rider and two
archers this time; it banked so they could bring their bows to bear. An arrow
chipped stone from the rock behind Maelys, and another tore Colm’s hat off. He
caught it in mid-air and kept going.

Maelys’s eyes followed the flappeter, which had swept by and
out over the centre of the valley, where it began to circle. Its rider was
leaning forwards, speaking into a glistening loop – a speck-speaker
– telling the army exactly where they were.

She could see them now. Hundreds of soldiers were scrambling
up clefts everywhere it was possible to force a path. Fit, strong and well
equipped, they would climb three spans to her one. She looked up, trying to
gauge the distance to the top. It seemed an impossibly long way.

‘How far to the lookout?’ panted Flydd.

‘Ten minutes for me,’ said Ketila, ‘but I don’t see how we
can get there.’

‘Why not?’

She pointed north along the cliff line. A head ducked back
out of view. More soldiers were coming along the crest of the ridge, straight
for them.

Ketila climbed faster, with Colm at her heels, but they were
rapidly widening the gap to Flydd, the only one who could save them. Maelys
clawed her way up the crevasse, breaking her fingernails and tearing skin off
her palms. The flappeter was coming again, its bowman leaning over the side and
pointing a club-headed arrow at Flydd.

Ketila had squeezed her thin body further into the cleft and
was looking down, her face quite blank, save when she looked at her brother.

Maelys reached Flydd, who was labouring badly.

‘How long will it take to make the portal, Xervish?’

It had taken ages to use the virtual construct in the
Nightland and she couldn’t imagine it would be any quicker here. And at the top
of the crag they would be completely exposed. There didn’t seem to be any way
out this time.

Flydd shook his head; he didn’t have the breath to answer.

The troops were swarming along the ridge and up the cliffs;
the huge flappeter rotored in for another attack. Even if they reached the top
of the crag, if the portal took more than a minute to make, it would be too
late.

Ketila was only a few spans from the crest, hurling rocks at
the flappeter’s eyes, and at the two archers on its back. They hadn’t fired at
her yet, for the flappeter was bouncing wildly in the wind, but if they got a
clear shot she would die.

It sideslipped away, but in the same breath Rurr-shyve came at
them out of nowhere with a new rider and two archers. Maelys cursed her folly
in throwing away the amulet. If she’d kept it, she might have had a hope of
influencing Rurr-shyve: either turning it away, or into the path of the male.

Colm was clinging to the side of the cleft, hanging on
against the blast of Rurr-shyve’s feather-rotors. She couldn’t come closer
without her feather-rotors hitting the rock; it was the only thing saving him.

Maelys climbed above Flydd and reached down her hand. His
grip was weak now; he seemed to be fading, yet there were still three spans to
go. A white flash caught her eye, far away to the left, the sun reflecting off
an approaching air-floater, and it was like being punched in the stomach. Every
time they had a minor victory, Jal-Nish and his troops regrouped and fought
back stronger than before. They had destroyed an army at Mistmurk Mountain but
he simply raised another one. He could rouse the whole world against them.

Flydd settled on a little platform beside her. His face was
pallid and sweaty, his cheeks slack, and he had a tremor in his right arm.

‘How are you doing?’ she said quietly, concerned for him
despite what he’d done in the cave.

‘I’ve had better days.’

‘Can you make it to the top?’

‘Haiiii!’ shrilled Ketila, and began hurling rocks
furiously.

She must have had plenty of practice during her lonely years
in the valley, for she was a very good shot. A fist-sized rock smacked into the
giant flappeter’s watermelon-sized right eye, caving it in. It lurched away, trumpeting
in pain, with its leather-clad rider pressing his hands over his own right eye
and screaming in sympathetic agony.