The Fate of the Fallen (The Song of the Tears Book 1) (22 page)

This time Irisis had her back to him and was walking up to
the cave. She stopped outside, the firelight lighting up her golden hair, and
shortly Maelys appeared, white-faced and stumbling. They stared at each other,
then Irisis put out her arms and Maelys went to her. They clung together, then
turned reproachful faces to him, and Irisis walked out of the cave and
vanished. She’d never been there at all. It was just Maelys, standing at the
entrance, staring down into the darkness.

He plunged so deeply into his mad obsession that, when
Maelys came down and stood before him, she was no more real than the phantoms
he saw everywhere. He didn’t hear her speak, nor notice when she backed away,
shaking her head in horror, though after she’d gone the visions slowly faded.
Once he’d come to his senses, he felt calmer and more at peace than he had in
ages.

Only then did he realise that he’d humiliated her in the
most unforgivable way. The night grew intensely cold but Nish couldn’t go back
to the camp fire. He huddled on the shore, sheltering from the incessant wind
behind Rurr-shyve, sickened by what he’d become. He had to put things right but
couldn’t see any way of doing it without raising Maelys’s hopes. He couldn’t
bear it if she were to try again.

So he did nothing, and crept back into the cave at dawn,
three-quarters frozen, silent, dead inside and cursing himself for the most
craven coward of all – one who took his frustrations out on the helpless
and innocent.

Maelys could not
 
meet Nish’s eyes that day. She couldn’t even
speak to him, and she was grateful for the small shield of the saddle horn
between them. He tried to talk to her several times but she leaned forwards
until the rotor blast drowned him out.

That afternoon she was nodding off in the saddle for the
third time when Nish leaned over the saddle horn, put his hand over hers and
directed Rurr-shyve to go down. It came to ground in a glade by a rivulet,
where stunted trees reared leafless black trunks to the sky. She sat in her
saddle, too weary to move, while he tethered the beast and set up camp.

She was half asleep when he lifted her off and laid her on
the ground on her spread cloak, and she was surprised to discover that he
carried her easily. He was growing stronger every day. He made tea sweetened
with black honey from an abandoned hive he’d found in the trees, and handed it
to her.

‘We’d better talk, Maelys.’

‘If it’s about last night –’ She still couldn’t look
him in the face.

‘It’s not, except that I’m a pig and a boor and I’m deeply
sorry.’

‘Oh!’ she exclaimed. ‘It doesn’t matter.’

Clearly she hadn’t expected an apology. Did she truly see
herself as having so little worth – or him as being so exalted? If only
she could see the worms writhing in his soul.

‘Of course it matters, but that’s not what I want to talk
about. It’s your nightmares.’

‘What I dream about is my own business.’ She added
pointedly, ‘I wouldn’t dream of asking you about your own.’

He squirmed, but continued. ‘It’s my business if it’s my
father getting at you.’

She rocked backwards. ‘But … that’s not possible.’

‘He can do almost anything with the tears.’ He peered at her
as if trying to see inside her head. ‘Especially to people whom he’s recognised
as having a talent for the Secret Art.’

She snorted. ‘That’s absurd.’

‘Is Fyllis’s talent absurd too?’

‘We knew she had one before she could walk. But I don’t even
look like her.’

‘Are you saying that no one else in your clan has a talent?
That Fyllis’s talent came from nowhere?’

She didn’t answer at once. Such gifts were only talked about
after checking that no one could overhear, or betray. ‘Cousin Cathim had a
small gift. And Father, I think. I heard Mother talking about it once to the
aunts. That must be why your … the God-Emperor took him. But not me.’

‘Maelys, I spent ten years listening to the guards’ gossip.
Flappeter riders need a talent to command their beasts, and to hear their
mindspeech. Since you can do both, you must have a talent for the Art, hidden
from you for your very survival – and I think Father is using it to send
nightmares at you.’

A chill swept down her back. Concealing a talent from the
God-Emperor’s watchers meant a death sentence. Even
having
such a talent was usually fatal and she shied away from
believing him – she didn’t want to be special. Those gifts had destroyed
Clan Nifferlin.

But if she did have one, what could it be? Fyllis hid the
family from Jal-Nish by blocking his watchers and listeners from sending
messages to Gatherer, while Cathim had been able to locate the secret
wisp-watchers from their intangible wisps, but Maelys couldn’t do either of
those things. To have any talent was bad enough, but to be vulnerable to
sendings from the God-Emperor was unbearable. Was he trying to drive her mad,
or was it something worse?

Nish crouched down in front of her. ‘You’ve got to uncover
your talent, Maelys.’

She shook her head. ‘I don’t want it. It destroyed our
clan.’

‘It’s for your very survival. And mine, if that still
matters to you. You can’t fight Father’s nightmares unless you understand your
own gift.’

‘I wouldn’t know where to begin. You’ve got to have a mentor.’
How did she know that? ‘Can … can you teach me?’

‘Me?’ He laughed hollowly. ‘Hardly.’ He began to pace in
front of the fire.

Since he seemed to be finished, Maelys lay down and closed
her eyes. She must have dozed, for the next she knew he was bent over her,
shaking her arm.

‘What?’ she said drowsily, unwilling to rouse from such
precious, dreamless slumber.

‘Did your mother or aunts give you anything, or tell you
anything about your talent?’

‘No. Nothing.’

‘Do you mean they sent you out on this perilous journey
armed with nothing but your wits?’

She bit down on a snappy retort. He surely hadn’t meant to
be rude. ‘I had my taphloid –’

‘So they did give you something.’

‘No, Father gave it to me when I was little.’

‘Show me.’

Maelys drew it out. It was warm in her cold hand. She
clenched it in her fist for a moment, for comfort, then passed it to him. ‘It’s
a clockwork moon calendar. Its movement was worked by a little crystal but I
had to implode it to save you, when the flappeter came.’

Rurr-shyve raised its long head.
You made me suffer, little one, and I haven’t forgotten it
.

Maelys shivered at the memories, then went on. ‘The aunts
said it would help to hide me from the enemy, unless they got really close.
They said it also held a secret that I’d need when I got to Hulipont, but I
suppose it was lost when I imploded the crystal.’ She looked at him anxiously.

‘I wouldn’t know,’ said Nish. He studied the taphloid, front
and back. ‘It’s a simple little thing.’

Like me, you mean. ‘No, it’s not. Sometimes other faces
appear on it briefly, with odd characters and symbols on them, and moving
hands, but I never knew what they meant or how to get them back.’

‘Didn’t your father explain it to you?’

‘He just told me to keep it hidden, even from Mother and the
aunts. They have no talent, you see. But they found out.’

Nish pressed the taphloid to his forehead and began to walk
in a circle around the embers of the camp fire. Every time he went past the
flappeter it raised its head, and specks of firelight were reflected in its
cluster eyes.

‘My clearsight tells me there’s something here,’ he said at
last. ‘Though I can’t say what. I guess it’s protected you by hiding the weak
aura your talent creates. That’s how Father hunts down people with talents; at
least, those who can’t conceal their aura.’

‘What is your clearsight?’ she asked timidly.

‘It’s hardly anything. Just an ability to see what’s at the
heart of things. Truths that have been concealed, things hidden. Unfortunately
it doesn’t tell me anything when I turn it upon myself.’ He gave a rueful grin
and rotated the taphloid in his hands. ‘My guess is that it’s meant to explain
your talent to you, when you’re old enough …’

‘I am old enough!’ She felt a mixture of emotions, among
them eagerness and anxiety. ‘Can you read it now?’

He gave a mirthless laugh. ‘I don’t think it’s meant to be
read by anyone but you.’

‘But how?’

‘You’ll need a crystal that suits the taphloid, I expect.’

‘Your father had them all scried out and destroyed.’

‘Not even my father could scry out all the hidden crystals
in the world.’ Nish paused, gnawing at his lip, as if he doubted his own words.
‘Though finding one will be another matter.’

‘Well, if there are hidden crystals, the leaders of the
Defiance will have them.’

‘What’s the Defiance? No, let me guess – some rabble
who want to forge me into a weapon against my father so as to gain power for
themselves.’

‘I’m sure they’re sincere,’ said Maelys tentatively. Now
he’d think she was trying to manipulate him again.

‘I’m sure they’re not! I spent the last years of the war
among the most powerful and corrupt people on Santhenar, remember? I don’t
trust anyone who’s after power, and especially not the hypocrites who claim
that they only want it to do good.’

‘But … surely to overthrow your father is a good thing? The
people –’

‘I used to think that, but I know better now. It’s the
common people who suffer most in a revolution, and no one gives a damn, least
of all the scum who are making revolution in their name. Before my father could
be cast down, the streets would be ankle-deep in blood, and for what? Just to
replace one tyrant with another. Or worse, to plunge Santhenar into a civil war
without end.

‘Remember this, Maelys, whenever anyone preaches revolution
to you. The worst and most capricious ruler in the world – yes, even my
father – is better than civil war, or anarchy. Under my father’s reign,
the ordinary people live their lives largely unhindered. They may not be free,
but at least they’re safe. But when there’s no one to govern,
everyone
suffers save the villains.’

FIFTEEN

Maelys was turning over everything Nish had said. The
aunts were secretive, calculating and obsessed, but they weren’t fools. If she
needed to know about her talent they would have left a way for her to uncover
it. Perhaps that’s why they’d sent her to Hulipont, where the Defiance must
have mancers who could teach her. Unfortunately that possibility was now
closed.

The other alternative was to find a crystal, though the few
crystals that had been hidden from the God-Emperor must be incredibly valuable
now, and why would anyone waste one on her?

They were flying through misty cloud, its moisture
condensing in little droplets on the bristles and spines of the flappeter, and
in her hair. Maelys blinked drops off her eyelashes and looked around. Nish was
asleep, wrapped in every garment he possessed but still shivering. She couldn’t
see anything through the cloud; they might not have been moving at all. Might
even have been heading back towards the enemy whom, she felt sure, was still
hunting them with the single-minded ruthlessness that had taken Jal-Nish all
the way to the top.

She glanced at Nish again. Asleep, he looked younger, and
fragile, but she reminded herself that he could be ruthless too. She put her
hand in her pocket, where she now kept the taphloid to avoid its chain tangling
with the amulet, for the comfort of touching it. It was as dead as before.

Rurr-shyve bucked in a sudden updraught and began to veer
left and right, as if unsure which way to go. Maelys hastily hauled the amulet
out and clutched it in her fist. The beast looked back at her, snorted, and
steadied.

The amulet was warm in her left hand, the taphloid cold in
her right. She drew it from her pocket and opened her hands, looking from one
to the other. Were the eyes of the amulet a kind of crystal? They glowed
faintly, and sometimes the amulet was warmer than it should have been.
Occasionally it moved about inside her shirt, so it had to have a source of
power. But was it stored power, or
sent
from the tears?

If sent, she could be in danger whenever she used it or
commanded the flappeter with it. Was that how Jal-Nish sent the nightmares and
hallucinations? And would she be in greater danger if she tried to use the
amulet in another way?

With its legs folded, it might just fit into the taphloid’s
crystal compartment. She thumbed the hidden catch, opened the taphloid, then
hesitated. If the amulet could link to the tears, putting it in might reveal
the taphloid’s secrets to Jal-Nish.

She closed the catch, afraid to take the risk, then opened
it. But everything she’d done since she left home had been a risk, and not
knowing what her talent was posed another. Making up her mind suddenly, Maelys
thrust amulet and thong into the taphloid and closed it. The outline of the
tiny door disappeared.

Rurr-shyve’s head whipped backwards, it glared at her then
turned sharply left and increased the beat of its feather-rotors. Alarmed, she
withdrew the amulet; Rurr-shyve turned back onto its original heading. What
could it mean? She wanted to ask Nish but he was still asleep. She put the
amulet in. Again the flappeter gave her that look and turned onto the new
heading.

Maelys realised that she was breathing hard. Had she given
away their location to the God-Emperor, who was now calling the flappeter to
him? Or had power from the amulet woken the taphloid and Rurr-shyve was now
following its directions, to safety? She had no way of telling.

Logic told her to take the amulet out and never risk bringing
it near the taphloid again. Intuition said that this was her only chance and
she’d better take it. She weighed the first, immersed herself in the second.
Which?