The Curse on the Chosen (The Song of the Tears Book 2) (47 page)

Flydd stood there, swaying back and forth on the balls of
his feet, then transferred the phial to his left hand and slipped the right
into his pocket.

The Numinator smiled thinly. ‘I won’t leave it for you to
work some minor havoc with. Gliss?’

Gliss came forwards and Flydd, with a show of reluctance,
handed him the phial. When Gliss had returned to the top of the steps, Flydd
said, ‘But did you know that the cursed flame is fed from a deeper source
– the abyssal flame.’ He raised the stone bottle. ‘One that is far
greater and more perilous.’

‘I have also seen the abyssal flame,’ said the Numinator.
‘The gift is no use to me.’ She gestured to Gliss, who took the stone bottle as
well. ‘Take them down.’

‘I will lead them below at once, master,’ said the Whelm.

Flydd held up his left hand, and put his right hand in his
pocket again. ‘Ah, but have you seen this? It is the ultimate unknown power, so
unlike any other force on Santhenar that I cannot understand where it came
from.’

He withdrew a cloth-wrapped package and held up the oval ice
flask containing the trapped, pure white, freezing chthonic flame.

‘What is that?’ the Numinator said sharply.

‘It came from a crystal chest hidden below the source of the
abyssal flame, at the very base of a shaft bored deep into the rock below
Mistmurk Mountain.’

‘That seems like a prodigious effort for such a little
thing,’ said the Numinator, though she seemed wary. ‘I sense no great power in
it.’

‘As I said, the chthonic flame is a power like no other on
Santhenar.’

‘
Chthonic
flame?’
She shot upright. ‘And it was hidden?
By
whom?
’

Maelys wondered if he was going to mention the woman in red,
but Flydd merely shrugged.

‘Bring it here.’

Flydd went forwards with the flask. The Whelm followed at
his heels, hands stretched towards Flydd’s throat, until the Numinator rapped,
‘He cannot harm me, Gliss. Flydd, place it on the table.’

Gliss returned to his position, his jerky movements more
exaggerated than before, and staring shard-like at Flydd all the while. If he got
the chance he would eliminate the threat to his master, permanently.

Flydd placed the flask on her table and stepped back.

‘What else do you know about the flame?’ Her frosty eyes
were fixed on him now, as if daring him to try and conceal anything from her.

‘Nothing. I wasn’t aware of its existence until just before
we fled the mountain. I found it by the merest chance.’

She continued to stare at him for a minute or two, then
gestured to Gliss. ‘Put them back to work.’

Late that night, Gliss heaved open the ice door of
their cell and crooked a finger at Maelys. ‘Come.’

‘Me?’ Her voice went squeaky. ‘What for?’

‘No questions.
Come!
’

She went. She couldn’t escape the Numinator and her seven
hundred Whelm, and even if, by some miracle, she did get out of the ice tower,
without shelter she would freeze to death within a day.

‘Where are you taking me?’

Gliss did not reply, but it became clear once he began
hauling her up the Thousand Steps – he was taking her back to the
Numinator and it could not be for any good reason.

The scrutators had flayed the flesh off Flydd’s bones
because he had dared inquire about the Numinator, and Maelys’s crime was of a
higher order. She was not strong enough to endure a flaying.

Her legs started to shake, and soon her knees were wobbling
so violently that she could barely stand up. She fell down, but Gliss kept
dragging her, unheeding, and her kneecap struck the edge of a tread so
painfully that she cried out. The Whelm did not stop and she forced herself to
her feet again.

The Numinator had Flydd’s measure; he could do nothing here,
and neither could Colm, so it was up to her again. That was the only advantage
of being little and young: people underestimated her. Maybe the Numinator would
too. If an opportunity came, she had to be ready to seize it.

They finally reached the Numinator’s steeple-topped eyrie
and she gestured at Gliss, dismissing him. He glowered at Maelys but left. He
did not take her seriously as a threat. Good so far.

‘Come here, girl.’

The Numinator was sitting bolt upright by the fire in a
chair formed from ice and covered in the white pelt of a large hunting cat. Her
feet were placed on the floor, perfectly aligned; her long-fingered hands
rested on the arms of the chair. She reminded Maelys of Mistress Hatyn, the
ferocious tutor in the schoolroom at Clan Nifferlin, in the days before the war
ended. She had been equally organised and controlled; no one had ever got away
with anything while Hatyn was in charge.

Maelys, realising that she was creeping like a mousy child,
straightened her back, forcing herself to meet the Numinator’s eye. The
Numinator gave the faintest, derisive twitch of the lips, as if to say,
You think you can stand up to
me
?

‘How did you come here, girl?’

She did not want to answer that. ‘My name isn’t
girl
. It’s Maelys. Maelys Nifferlin.’

‘I know your name, and your clan. Every name on Santhenar is
in my bloodline registers.’

‘Stud books is what I would call them!’

‘And you are a vulgar little trollop.’

The Numinator was trying to provoke her, which meant that
she wanted something. Perhaps they could bargain. ‘Who are you?’ she said,
because she couldn’t think of anything else to say, and couldn’t bear to be
stared at in that unnerving silence.

‘I am the Numinator and I hold your fate in my hands.’

Why state the obvious? The Numinator must have some
weakness, some very great need, and Maelys had to find out what it was.

‘How came you here?’ the Numinator repeated. ‘You did not
walk all the way from the south; neither did you fly in an air-floater.’

Surely she knew about the portal? And if she did not, why
not ask Flydd? Because Maelys was more likely to give something away?

‘I didn’t really understand it,’ said Maelys.

‘Liar! It was a portal, wasn’t it?’

How could she deny it? The Numinator must be able to see
everything from up here. ‘Yes,’ said Maelys, then it occurred to her that Flydd
might have wanted it kept secret. Portals were extremely difficult to make.

The Numinator sat up even straighter. ‘And Flydd created it?
How, precisely?’

‘I don’t know anything about mancery …’

‘But you know what he did. You saw him make it. Speak!’

The Numinator leaned forwards, fixing her frosty eyes on
Maelys and rubbing a ring on the middle finger of her right hand, and Maelys
felt so overpowered, so flustered, that she spoke without thinking.

‘Only the second time.’

‘The
second
time?
Are you telling me that Flydd
twice
made a portal?’

It was impossible to resist her; Maelys simply did not have
the will. The Numinator must have bewitched her in some way. ‘Three times,’ she
whispered. ‘Once when we escaped from Mistmurk Mountain, and then …’ She dared
not mention the Nightland, for that would lead to Emberr, ‘and then to get to
Plogg –’

The Numinator held up a slender, veined hand. ‘Plogg is a
village in Elludore, and that is a land I know well. Why did you go to Plogg?’

‘It was close to a hidden valley …’ Maelys trailed off, for
the Numinator wore an enigmatic smile.

‘I checked my registers last night. Your companion, Colm,
was heir to a small, impoverished estate in Bannador called Gothryme, and feels
he was robbed of it. His heritage – the entirety of it – is
recorded in the Histories and even mentioned in the twenty-third Great Tale,
the
Tale of the Mirror
. You were
going to Dunnet, were you not, to find the treasure left in a cave there long
ago, concealed by a perpetual illusion?’

‘Yes,’ Maelys said faintly. If the Numinator knew everything
that had ever happened on Santhenar, how could Maelys possibly take her on? But
she had to. Never give up, she told herself. Never, never,
never
.

‘And did Colm find his heritage?’ said the Numinator.

Maelys was on very dangerous ground. She dared not mention
the mimemule that Flydd had vanished, else the Numinator would take it. The
mimemule, whatever it was, was her only hope of escape from Noom.

‘The illusion had been broken. The treasure was gone. There
was just a wooden box full of dirt and an empty pouch.’

It was the hardest lie she had ever told, even more
difficult than lying to the God-Emperor about being pregnant with Nish’s child.
She forced herself to meet the Numinator’s gaze, but lightly.

The Numinator frowned. ‘But Faelamor was the greatest
illusionist of the age. How could any mancer break her illusion?’

‘I know nothing about such things.’ Maelys was standing as
rigidly as the Numinator, her fingers curled like butcher’s hooks. Relax,
you’ll give yourself away. Her fingers did not want to relax.

The Numinator tapped her nails on the icy arm of her chair.
‘The treasure is irrelevant. But three portals, one after another – how
could any common mancer do that?’

Maelys remembered Flydd questioning where his ability, or
his knowledge to make portals, had come from. Dare she ask? It seemed overly
bold, but she had to be, else she must fail.

‘What are you saying, Numinator?’

The Numinator was staring into the flames, rubbing her right
forefinger against her thumb. ‘Making portals is one of the greatest and most
difficult of all the Secret Arts – so difficult that, over the course of
the Histories, hundreds of years have often gone by without any successful
portals being made. To make a single portal is exhausting, and cripplingly so
for all but the greatest mancers …’

So how
could
Flydd
do it, even with the aid of the woman in red?

‘Xervish Flydd was never a truly great mancer,’ the
Numinator went on. ‘His genius lay in other areas – leadership and
strategy. I would have thought a portal beyond him, even at his peak. But
three
portals, one after another, and
soon after taking renewal, beggars comprehension. Unless …’ She looked up into
Maelys’s eyes. ‘You pressured him. Were you there while he used the renewal
spell?’

‘He required me to watch.’ Maelys did not want to be
reminded of that horror again. ‘He wanted me to know what I’d done to him.’

‘Tell me about it. Omit not the least detail.’

Maelys did so, and when she’d finished, the Numinator sat
back, frowning. ‘Is that all?’

‘Have you taken renewal?’ said Maelys.

‘I have no need of it,’ the Numinator said loftily.

Therefore she wasn’t old human – so who was she?

‘Did anything unusual happen to him?’

‘I wouldn’t know. I’d never heard of renewal before …’

‘You’re withholding something,’ said the Numinator. ‘Keep
nothing back – or else.’

‘During renewal,’ said Maelys, ‘Flydd saw a woman dressed in
red. He thought he was her, at one stage, or that she was him, but he later
realised that was just a hallucination. He saw her afterwards, too, when he was
hunted through Mistmurk Mountain. She taught him about portals. That’s how we
escaped.’

‘A woman in red?’ The Numinator looked at Maelys sharply.
‘It still does not add up. One mancer can’t simply
tell
another how to make a portal; there is a craft to it and it
requires long practice. Tell me how the first portal was made, and where it was
intended to go.’

Maelys felt that every word was a minor betrayal; she wanted
to defy the Numinator but her will to resist was being overpowered by some
mighty spell or Art. She told the Numinator about Flydd’s original plan to
escape via the shadow realm, how it had been frustrated by the destruction of
the fifth crystal, and all that followed.

‘I do not know this shadow realm,’ said the Numinator,
frowning. ‘At least, not by that name. How did he make the first portal?’

‘I can’t say,’ said Maelys. ‘We were separated for ages; I
only reached him as it was opening. I think it had something to do with the
chthonic flame.’

‘And then the portal took you to the shadow realm? Tell me
about it.’

Maelys didn’t know what to say, and the Numinator seized on
her hesitation. ‘Don’t even think about lying to me, Maelys Nifferlin.’

Maelys, thinking of the lie she’d already told, felt a flush
moving up her cheeks. What if the Numinator could tell? She dared not risk
another lie; Emberr’s life was at stake. ‘We did not go to the shadow realm. We
… we ended up in the Nightland.’

The Numinator’s right hand clenched so tightly on the arm of
her ice chair that steam rose from it, then, with a little crack, it crumbled
into chunks. The fire died down to the faintest flicker in its bowl, just
enough to illuminate her right cheek. A shower of droplets fell from the point
of the steeple, high above. One splashed on the top of Maelys’s head and it
burned like ice.

‘There is no Nightland,’ said the Numinator. ‘It collapsed
to nothing as its one prisoner, Rulke, escaped for the last time. How do you
know it was not the shadow realm?’

‘Flydd said it was the Nightland. There were all sorts of
virtual devices in it, including Rulke’s original pattern for his construct.
That’s how Flydd made his second portal – he powered the virtual
construct with the chthonic flame you took from him.’

The Numinator drew in a sharp breath and held it for a long
time. Bringing the fire to life with a hand gesture, she pulled her chair close
to it, then closer still, rubbing her hands together. Her fingers had gone
blue; she hunched over the flame, trembling.

‘It makes no sense,’ she said at last. ‘When Rulke escaped
the second time, the Nightland was collapsing to a singularity, for the power
that had held it together was exhausted. How can it still exist two hundred and
twenty years later?’