The Curse on the Chosen (The Song of the Tears Book 2) (71 page)

There was not a trace of the despair he must be feeling
– Nish sounded like the great leader from the tales she’d read as a
child, and it gave her hope where she’d had none.

No one moved. ‘This is just like the last time,’ he said to
Flydd and Yggur. ‘My every encounter with Father repeats what has happened
before, then takes it one step further.’

The previous bitterness was also gone; Nish seemed to have
reached an acceptance of his fate, which was more than Maelys could do.

‘Mutiny in your ranks, Cryl-Nish?’ said the God-Emperor,
referring to Nish’s black and blue face. ‘Flydd.’ He nodded stiffly. ‘
Yggur
– what a pleasure it is to
see you again after so many years. Where have you been hiding?’

Yggur held up the bracelets. ‘I fell into the hands of the
Numinator and she hobbled me.’

‘It’s as well I only recently learned of her existence,’
said Jal-Nish. ‘How did she hide her realm from Gatherer?’

‘You’d have to ask her that,’ said Yggur.

‘Oh, I will.’ The God-Emperor’s gaze fell on Maelys and her
insides turned to ice, for she knew what he was going to say. ‘Not showing yet,
I see.’

‘There are signs, Grandfather, of my child,’ she lied. ‘It’s
only three months, but there are unmistakable signs.’

‘My healers will check them with the utmost thoroughness.’
On recognising Flangers and Chissmoul, who were holding hands, he smiled
grimly. ‘Minor fugitives from olden times, but revenge will be tasty
nonetheless. Guards, take them.’

The guards had just stepped off the air-sled when the air
went storm-cloud black beneath it, thunder rolled and the air-sled was thrown
spans into the air. Klarm tumbled head over heels to the left but landed on his
feet like a circus acrobat. Jal-Nish, taken by surprise, slammed into the
ground on his good arm and shoulder and the tears went flying. He snatched at them
but they rolled out of reach down the slope, connected by their chain, making
ominous crackling sounds and charring the grass in twin, steaming paths.

Yggur was about to spring for them but Klarm had his
knoblaggie out in the twitch of an eyelid, pointing its brassy end at Yggur’s
heart. ‘You remember this, I’m sure.’

Yggur remained in his crouch for a few seconds, then raised
his hands and stood up, and the chance was lost. Klarm gathered up the tears by
their chain, holding them well away from himself.

The air-sled turned over twice and thudded side-on into the
ground, bending its frame like a banana. A black mushroom grew behind it
– evidently the phenomenon that had thrown it into the air – and
Yalkara pushed through its striated stalk.

Maelys moved behind Nish but not before Yalkara saw her. The
Imperial Guard lifted the God-Emperor to his feet; he clutched his shoulder
with his other hand, winced, then Klarm placed the tears around his neck and
Jal-Nish limped across to Yalkara. She was almost a head taller, and inclined
her head to look down her nose at him. In other circumstances, Maelys might
have cheered.

‘Who are you?’ Jal-Nish said, unsuccessfully attempting to
project the God-Emperor’s air of power and invulnerability, though it was
evident he was discomfited by her. ‘I know all the great powers of this world,
and you’re not one of them.’

‘You didn’t know the Numinator existed,’ Nish pointed out.

The exposed half of Jal-Nish’s face twitched in annoyance.
‘She would not have survived had she not siphoned power from Yggur.’

Yalkara said, staccato, ‘I am Charon! I am Yalkara! I am not
of this world, though I dwelt here for a long time. Indeed, I am not of
any
world. I was birthed in the void,
and to the void do I return when my business is done.’ Her gaze touched briefly
on Maelys.

Maelys turned away; she could not meet Yalkara’s eyes. To
her left, the air was rippling in front of a tree on the edge of the clearing,
twenty paces away. What now?

A faint outline formed there, a slender, female shape, not
tall but very upright and stiff. It faded into air again, but Maelys knew the
Numinator had come for her.

Yggur was looking in the same direction, probing the burned
skin under his bracelets and wincing. He’d seen as well, and Maelys was pleased
that he knew. Yggur alone had not judged her, but could he protect her?

Jal-Nish plunged his good hand into Gatherer as if he were
checking the truth of what Yalkara had said. ‘From the moment I set eyes on
you, I knew you had to be from
beyond
.
Indeed, when I recently discovered the Nightland had been restored, Reaper told
me that no one on Santhenar had the power to do so. You restored it, didn’t
you?’

‘I did,’ said Yalkara.

‘To attack Santhenar and take it for your own.’ His voice
had a triumphant ring. ‘I read that threat months ago; I told Nish about it
before he escaped from prison.’

‘What a puffed-up little emperor you are,’ she said
contemptuously. ‘I rebuilt the Nightland for one purpose only – to
protect the son I conceived there with my enemy, Rulke, two centuries ago.
Alas, being birthed in the Nightland, Emberr could never leave, and now he is
dead. Once I have recovered his body I will allow the Nightland to decay into
the nothingness it came from, and Santhenar will never see me again.’

Jal-Nish withdrew his hand from Gatherer, studied it –
it shook a little – and hastily thrust it back in. The song of the tears
resumed. ‘You speak truth,’ he said.

‘I would not bother to lie to an insignificant worm like
you.’

Jal-Nish flushed. ‘You did not protect your son very well.’

‘So says a man who has lost a daughter and three sons …’

Suddenly Yalkara’s cheeks went as hard as sheets of metal,
as though something terrible had occurred to her. ‘Oh, irony most bitter!’ she
whispered.

Jal-Nish and Klarm looked at one another. Klarm shrugged.

‘All that time I spent trapped in the void, trying to free
Emberr from the Nightland,’ she said softly. ‘Maintaining it was draining all
my strength and I knew it must soon fail; and he would die. I had to get Emberr
out, but I could not force a portal through the Nightland’s defences.’

‘Why didn’t you use the chthonic flame?’ said Flydd.

‘I dared not; not to go
there
.
It could have killed Emberr, and alerted …
others
to the Nightland’s existence. But when the nodes were destroyed, and Jal-Nish
concentrated the world’s power in his tears, an opportunity came.’

‘Really?’ said the God-Emperor. He did not look pleased to
hear it. ‘Pray go on. Tell me everything.’

‘I saw an old mancer running for his life, hiding in ditches
and living off voles and wood grubs.’

Flydd’s head jerked up and he stared at Yalkara. Jal-Nish
chuckled.

‘He had once been one of the great,’ she went on, ‘and with
a suitable source of power he might be great again. I influenced him – it
wasn’t hard; his mind lay wide open – to take refuge on top of Mistmurk
Mountain. I’d once made portals from its obelisk, so it would be easiest to
recreate one there, and power was available from the cursed flame. The
mountain’s seeping vapours would assist me to get into his mind and make him
think my plan was his own.’

‘What took you so long?’ said Yggur.

‘Flydd proved more stubborn than I’d expected. It’s hard to
influence anyone from the void, very hard; it took me years, but by that time
he was close to the end of his life and no longer had the strength to make a
portal. He was soon going to die, and my last chance to save Emberr would die
with him.’

‘But then Nish and Maelys came,’ said Flydd. ‘Maelys
pressured me to take renewal, and you struck.’

‘I entered your mind during renewal, when your will was
weakest. I taught you the great portal spell and showed you how to use the
abyssal flame to do what I could not: open a two-part portal: one part to bring
me from the void to Mist-murk, and the other to take me to the Nightland.’

‘Ah,’ said Flydd. ‘I wondered why there were two linked
spirals.’

‘But the renewal went wrong. You lost your memories and your
Art with them and, in trying to help you regain it, I unwittingly allowed you
access to
my
memories.’

‘Ah,’ said Flydd.

‘When Vivimord blocked you from opening the portal, you
looked deeper. You saw the hidden chthonic flame, the last thing I would have
allowed near the Nightland, or Emberr, and you opened the portal with it. But
that flame is far too powerful; it created the two-part portal in an instant
and, before I was ready, Vivimord seized my portal and fled with it, leaving me
stuck in the void.’

‘He directed the portal here to Gendrigore,’ said Nish.
‘With me, to set up the Defiance anew.’

‘But you got away from him,’ said Flydd. ‘We’d all like to
hear that tale.’

‘You can relate it in my torture chambers,’ said Jal-Nish,
though he made no move to enforce the threat.

Maelys eyed the God-Emperor uneasily. Why didn’t he attack?
Because he loved to toy with his victims, of course. He had them at his mercy;
he could draw out the moment for as long as he liked.

‘Flydd went to the Nightland and I was terrified for my
son,’ said Yalkara, ignoring Jal-Nish, ‘but I managed to divert him away from
Emberr towards Rulke’s virtual construct. If Flydd used it to escape, I might
still find a way into the Nightland. It never occurred to me that Maelys was
the real danger, for I could barely see her – the taphloid concealed her
from me.’

‘Poor Emberr,’ said Maelys aloud, remembering their first
meeting.

‘He had been locked into the age of a young man for more
than two hundred years, and he was desperately lonely. Emberr was a
romantic
!’ Yalkara said it as though it
was a weakness. ‘He yearned for the love of a good woman. I had shaped him
thus, for he could only escape by trapping a young woman to take his place and
passing his Nightland essence to her. I never thought he would be so weak as to
put his feelings for another above his own needs.’

‘I’m sure no other Charon was ever so weak,’ said Maelys.

‘If we had been, we would not have survived. Emberr scented
you, and drew you to him, but instead of trapping you and escaping, as I’d
taught him to do, he fell for you, and you for him. When the opportunity came,
and the Numinator made her portal to the Nightland, Maelys went back to Emberr,
lay with him,
and killed him
.’

Hundreds of heads, including the entire militia, turned
Maelys’s way, staring at her in horror and disgust. The God-Emperor’s fingers
sank, black-nailed and claw-like, into Reaper and she knew it was the end, for
her and her family.

‘She lay with him, then killed him?’ Jal-Nish grated. ‘The
callous little bitch.’

‘Unwittingly,’ said Yalkara. ‘In an irony of cosmic
proportions, Maelys’s skin bore traces of the chthonic flame she’d leapt
through to enter the portal, and when they lay together it passed to him. It
could not harm her, but it was deadly to Emberr.’

‘Why so?’ said Jal-Nish, his voice rather high-pitched. ‘I
don’t see the irony.’

‘You never could,’ sneered Flydd, as if he had nothing to
lose. ‘It’s one of your greatest failings,
God-Emperor
.’

The rain stopped suddenly. Yalkara spoke more softly yet.
‘Chthonic fire does not exist only in our physical world. It can, or at least
it once
could
, inhabit any of the
eleven dimensions of space and time. That is why it’s so useful for making
portals, and why it was inimical to Emberr. Because he was partly
of
the Nightland, the chthonic fire
began to unmake him inside. Romantic love had betrayed him.’

Maelys ground her fists into her eyes to keep back the
tears, but as she did so, she remembered Emberr looking down at the white fire
shimmering on her skin. Bestowing that enigmatic smile on her, he’d said,
You truly are the woman who will free me
.
Had he known what the fire was? Had he lain with her, knowing that it would
kill him, rather than obey his mother’s imperative to trap her in his place? He
must have, and it was the noblest sacrifice of all. Nothing could stop Maelys’s
tears now.

‘I was sure the Nightland had been rebuilt by some beast
from the void,’ said Jal-Nish, and now the tremor was reflected in his voice,
‘to attack beautiful Santhenar. I used Gatherer to peer into the void’s darkest
recesses –’

‘
You did what?
’
cried Yalkara.

Jal-Nish began to pace back and forth in agitation. ‘I
– I could not do any harm by looking.’

‘The inhabitants of the void hate creeping, sneaking spies
far more than they hate intruders, little emperor. You could see no more than
the vaguest threat, and a meaningless one, since threats are everywhere in the
void. But you,
and Santhenar
, out of
all the billions of worlds in the universe, will have been located by at least
one of the creatures that roam the void –
the one that sees everything in it
. When did you discover the
Nightland? Quick!’

‘After Flydd opened the portal there from Mistmurk Mountain,
over a month ago,’ said Jal-Nish. ‘But I could not follow –’

‘
You
could not
break into the Nightland even if you expended all the power of the Profane
Tears. But
it
will have seen what you
were looking at,’ she said relentlessly. ‘It cannot come straight here, for the
Three Worlds are protected from the void, but it will have noted everything you
were spying on.’

‘The Nightland forms a weakness in the barrier that protects
us from the void, and the desperate creatures that inhabit it,’ explained
Yggur, running his fingers around the left bracelet, then the right, then the
left again.

‘For one who knows how,’ said Yalkara, ‘the Nightland might
be used as a bridge across which to attack Santhenar. And there
is
one in the void, the very same
all-seeing being, who does know how to make such a bridge – indeed, you
could say that
it is a bridge
. At
least, it was.’