The Curse on the Chosen (The Song of the Tears Book 2) (73 page)

‘Then give it to them!’ cried Maelys. ‘The damned stuff has
caused nothing but trouble since you stole it.’

‘It doesn’t work like that.’

‘Why not?’ she shrieked.

‘The Stilkeen will want … repayment.’

‘Good!’ Maelys said vengefully.

‘Repayment from everyone who has ever used the flame,’ said
Yalkara, ‘or defiled it by touching it; or has even seen it.’

‘Seen it?’

‘The Stilkeen is – was, and will be again – a
higher being. Even setting eyes upon its soul-core is a monstrous sacrilege,
one you’ll all have to pay for.’

‘
But not you?
’
What was Yalkara planning?

‘Everything you’d done was coming undone,’ said the
Numinator, ‘so you planned to take Emberr and run back to the void, leaving
Santhenar to the mercy of Stilkeen and its revenants.’

‘Survival or extinction!’ exclaimed Yalkara. ‘Us or them. It
always comes down to that in the end.’

‘Not this time!’ cried the Numinator. ‘Your folly destroyed
the only thing you cared about, and you’re not getting what’s left of him.’

The two women sprang at Maelys in the same moment, but Yggur
cast off the bracelets which he had corroded to nothing, whipped her aside and,
with a finger-flick, called the Numinator’s hover-disc into Maelys’s place.
Yalkara and the Numinator collided with it in mid-air. The Numinator went
transparent again; Yalkara too; light streaked all around them and they
vanished as completely as the Stilkeen had done.

Yggur set Maelys on her feet on the grass, but did not let
go of her. She could feel the power in his fingers – power such as he
hadn’t had in seven years.

‘What do we do now?’ said Flydd. ‘This changes everything.’

‘It changes nothing!’ said Klarm. ‘The greater beings may
lie and cheat and play with the fate of worlds, but a simple man can only hold
to his oath.’ He shot a steely glance at Flydd, then settled the tears carefully
around his neck. ‘We have a common enemy now – the Stilkeen. We cannot
afford to be divided, and none of you can fight the tears, or use them, so the
God-Emperor’s realm must prevail for the good of Santhenar. Surrender and I
will do what I can for you.’

‘Even with the fate of the world at stake, we’re not such
fools as that,’ grated Flydd.

‘Then you leave me no choice. I’m sorry Flydd, Yggur. You
were good friends, but Santhenar must come first. It’s war to the death, for
all save Colm, Nish and any offspring he may have.’ Klarm stepped up onto the
crumpled air-raft. The song of the tears rose and fell, the air-raft lifted and
wavered off through the rain.

Flydd looked at the ragged, filthy militia, then Jal-Nish’s
spit-polished troops on the ridges, surrounding them on all sides. ‘Give your
orders, Nish.’

Nish was staring at the red-hot caduceus, and the cracks
radiating out from the rock. The grass had burned away for two spans in all
directions.

‘I wouldn’t listen,’ he whispered. ‘I’m the biggest fool in
the world.’

‘What are you talking about?’ Flydd said impatiently.

‘On the day my ten years in prison were up, Father warned me
that Santhenar was in danger from the void, but I refused to believe him. I was
sure he was trying to manipulate me.

‘And I did it again when he came to Mistmurk Mountain. He
told me that he wanted to atone for all the terrible wrongs he had done. Father
begged me for help, and no one can ever know what it cost him – proud,
closed-off man that he is – to humble himself before a son who had always
disappointed him. I refused him and called him a liar, both times. And both
times he was telling the truth.’

‘Jal-Nish is the God of Liars,’ said Flydd, ‘and the price
liars pay is that no one believes them when they are telling the truth.’

‘Oh yes,’ yelled Colm. ‘Oh yes, Flydd. How you’re going to
rue
your
lies.’

‘Run to your new master,’ snarled Flydd, hand on the hilt of
his jag-sword. ‘Run for your very life, and enjoy the price he pays you, while
you can.’

Colm went without looking back. Will Klarm give him
Gothryme, Maelys wondered, and will it be worth it? Or will it, as Ketila told
him before she died, be far too late, as everything else has been too late for
him?

‘Father begged me for forgiveness,’ said Nish, ‘and I rejected
him. He wanted my help to atone yet I, who seek redemption for my own failings,
callously denied it to him. What kind of a man am I, to play god and refuse
Father what he needed most?’

‘You’re human and fallible, like all of us,’ said Flydd.

‘Too fallible. I have made a terrible error of judgment. If
I had believed Father,’ said Nish, ‘we wouldn’t be here now. None of this would
have happened. The chthonic fire would never have been found, and our world
wouldn’t be under threat. He is a monster, but I’m a fool.’

Maelys remembered the white fire spreading across all the
southern ice around Noom, and shivered.

‘The tears will take years to master,’ said Yggur. ‘Assuming
Klarm can use them at all. He can’t defend the world from the Stilkeen, or the
revenants. To save Santhenar we’ve got to defeat Klarm first. Nish, are you all
right?’

Nish shook his head, dazedly. ‘I should be glad my father is
gone, never to be seen again. Why am I not?’

‘Flesh is flesh and blood is blood,’ said Flydd. ‘The
strongest bond of all.’

‘The one I never appreciated until it was gone.’

Tulitine put an arm around him. ‘Remember what I said about
Vivimord after his trial at the Maelstrom of Justice and Retribution?’

‘With powerful mancers, one must always see the body,’ said
Nish.

‘The future is unwritten. Anything can happen.’

The horn sounded on the ridge, and Klarm’s voice rang out.
‘This is your last chance to surrender.’

Most of the prisoners followed Colm, though a few remained.
No one spoke, and not a single man or woman of the militia moved, not even, to
Nish’s surprise, the few remaining of Boobelar’s detachment.

‘Very well,’ said Klarm regretfully. ‘You’ve made your
choice. Imperial Militia, show them no quarter. Charge!’

The story continues in

Book 3

The Destiny of the Dead

The first
chapters of

The Destiny of the Dead

follow

FIRST CHAPTERS OF

THE DESTINY OF THE DEAD

ONE

There’s no way out this time, is there?’ said Maelys,
wiping the teeming rain from her eyes.

Nish glanced at her and managed a smile, for she was even
grubbier than he was; her small figure was clotted with mud from head to foot.
‘I can’t think of one.’ He rubbed his nose and winced. His battered face was so
swollen that he was almost unrecognisable.

It was mid-morning on the Range of Ruin, and everyone had
gathered in a ring around him, hoping for a miracle, but it wasn’t going to
happen. The enemy held the surrounding ridges, trapping them in a clearing in
the forested valley; they had been ordered to take Nish and Maelys alive, and
put everyone else to death. All their struggles over the past weeks, and all
Nish’s agony, had been for nothing.

He and his Gendrigorean militia had driven themselves to the
limit of human endurance to climb the rain-drenched range and reach Blisterbone
Pass before his father’s army, and they would have succeeded had their
treacherous guide, Curr, not led them astray. The pass was only a league away
in a direct line, yet it was as unreachable as the moon, for the enemy’s
advance guard had beaten them to it and the rest of that monstrous army could
not be far behind.

For supporting Nish and daring to oppose his corrupt father
– the God-Emperor Jal-Nish Hlar – the peaceful little nation of
Gendrigore was going to be obliterated and its men, women and children taken
into slavery. Nish felt responsible, for the Gendrigoreans had not wanted to go
to war; he had talked them into coming and now he bitterly regretted it.

Their situation was hopeless, yet he could not give in.
During the lyrinx war they had snatched victory from defeat many times, and
surely there had to be a way to do it again. But they could not win by force of
arms, which left only the Secret Art.

‘Flydd?’ Nish said quietly. ‘We really need your help.’

‘What if you made another portal with the mimemule?’ said
Maelys, for Flydd had used that little mimicking device to create the portal
that had brought her, Flydd and Yggur here.

Xervish Flydd, the mancer who had led humanity to an
impossible victory in the war against the lyrinx ten years ago, swayed on his
broad feet. Though he had regained some of his lost gift for the Art, he had
never been the same after casting that terrible Renewal Spell upon himself
almost six weeks ago.

It had replaced his aged and failing body with that of a
bigger man in middle age, but Flydd was in constant pain and he seemed meaner,
harder and … Nish resisted the thought for as long as he could – less
trustworthy. A few minutes ago, Flydd had been gazing at the Profane Tears,
Gatherer and Reaper, the source of the God-Emperor’s power, as though he wanted
to snatch them for himself.

‘I can’t!’ Flydd said, clutching at his belly. ‘Bringing so
many people through that second portal took everything I had, and the
aftersickness
–’ He doubled up as
though he was going to vomit, gagged, and straightened painfully. ‘I don’t have
the power to use the mimemule again.’ He looked around blearily. ‘I don’t know
this place. What’s our line of retreat?’

‘There isn’t one,’ said Nish. ‘We’re in a valley shaped like
a tilted oval bowl. It’s a good league long and half a league wide, and the
upper end runs up to the white-thorn peak, the mountain guarding this side of
Blisterbone Pass.’

With his sabre, he gestured towards the towering mountain,
barely visible through the blinding rain. ‘The upper part of the valley ends at
the cliffs; I don’t think anyone could climb them. The enemy holds the ridges
to either side of us and they’re bare, rain-washed rock with no cover –
we’d never fight our way up. They also guard the only way out, a gorge spanned
by a natural arch of stone.’

He pointed downslope, though nothing could be seen in that
direction save a wall of rainforest marking the lower edge of the clearing.
‘The valley floor is covered in forest, apart from another clearing lower down,
near the gorge.’

‘Is it more defendable than this one?’ said Flydd.

‘I don’t know. What do you think, Tulitine?’ Nish said to
the tall, striking woman to his left.

The old seer had used a Regression Spell to temporarily
restore herself to a relatively young age, then made a desperate attempt to
reach Nish’s militia and warn them that they had been betrayed, but she had
arrived just as the trap had been sprung.

Tulitine thought for a moment. ‘I don’t think so, for the
valley narrows down there. The enemy archers could fire into the clearing from
the stone arch, and from the nearby ridge.’

‘Forget it,’ said Flydd. ‘We’ll make our stand here.’ He
turned towards the river that ran down the centre of the valley; it could just
be made out through the trees. ‘Can they cross the river and attack us from
behind?’

‘I’m afraid so,’ said Tulitine. ‘It’s partly dammed by
fallen trees just upstream; that’s how I got here.’

‘Can you stop them crossing with your Art?’ said Nish.

‘I only know healing charms. Besides, the Regression Spell
is already fading, and when it comes undone …’

Tulitine had hinted earlier at what it would do to her. The
consequences were going to be horrific and there was nothing anyone could do to
stop the spell failing. That left only Yggur, who towered to Nish’s left,
craggy as an ancient cedar and seemingly as indestructible.

‘I know you’ve got power, old friend,’ Nish said, ‘and we’ve
never needed it more. If you could create a concealing mist or …’

‘Ordinarily, that would be the easiest of spells,’ said
Yggur. ‘Especially here, where there’s water everywhere …’

‘But?’ cried Nish. Yggur had been his last hope.

‘Gatherer is watching everything I do, and the moment I try
to draw power Reaper blocks me. I’m not strong enough to take on the greatest
force on Santhenar.’ Yggur rubbed his inflamed wrists. For seven years he’d
been held prisoner by the Numinator, whose enchanted bracelets had continually
drained him of his powers of mancery to bolster her own. ‘Besides, I feel
strangely hobbled in this place.’

‘What do you mean,
hobbled
?’
said Maelys sharply. She pressed a hand between her breasts, and frowned.

Nish had seen her make that unconscious gesture many times,
and knew that she was making contact with her taphloid, the mysterious little device
she’d worn around her neck since childhood. Touching it normally comforted her,
but she seemed troubled now.

‘I don’t know.’ Yggur’s gaze flicked towards the red-hot
caduceus, the height of a small tree, embedded in the centre of the clearing.
Whatever uncanny force drove its internal fires, it was unquenched by the
teeming rain. ‘There may be a way to hide what I’m doing from Gatherer, but …
it will take time to find it.’ He headed towards the caduceus, shielding his
eyes from its glare.

Time we don’t have. Nish could feel the radiance beating
upon his bruised face. The caduceus, a winged shaft tightly entwined by a pair
of open-mouthed serpents, was made of black iron forged from the heart of a
meteorite and, when Stilkeen had hurled it down, its point had penetrated half
a span of solid rock.