The Curse on the Chosen (The Song of the Tears Book 2) (21 page)

Colm looked askance at the flame. His larynx bobbed up and
down, and his eyes dilated until Flydd could see twin flames reflected there.
‘You’re mad.’

‘Very probably,’ Flydd said dryly. If he couldn’t separate
himself from the woman in red, he probably would go mad.

A spear shot above their heads, passed in one side of the
cone then out the other.

‘That wasn’t supposed to get through,’ he muttered.

Flydd made the cone again, using all the Art she’d shown
him. It hurt in the centre of his chest this time;
she
might have been capable of channelling such power without harm,
but he could not. The cone went a speckled blue and grey, like a wild duck’s
egg and, feeling as though he was carrying an enormous weight, he stepped
towards the crackling flame.

Colm didn’t budge; the moving cone struck his elbow,
zzzt
. He let out a yelp and clutched his
arm.

‘Don’t touch the cone,’ Flydd said over his shoulder.

‘You might have mentioned that beforehand.’ Colm cupped his
elbow. ‘I don’t see any way past the flame.’

If he knew what Flydd had in mind, Colm would fight him all
the way. Flydd pressed forwards, his renewed heart pounding painfully. This was
going to take all the Art he had, and there was no way to test it first. If it
wasn’t enough, or if he got it wrong …

‘What the blazes are you doing?’ cried Colm, for Flydd was
heading directly towards the curving wall of flame.

He smiled mirthlessly.

‘Flydd!’ Colm grabbed him by the shoulder and tried to heave
him around. He’d worked it out. ‘You’ll burn us alive.’

Flydd shook him off. ‘It’s the only way out, and the cone
will protect us.’ I hope.

The blow to the side of the head rocked him; he staggered
and nearly fell, and Colm, eyes wide and mouth gaping, leapt at him, mad with
panic. Flydd didn’t have the strength to fight him; he reached up with the
twisted blade and drew the point of the cone down until it touched Colm’s head.
The younger man crumpled as if he’d been hit with an axe.

Flydd pressed on. It took an effort to move, for he was
carrying Colm’s dead weight on the base of the cone. He heaved it across to the
flame, then hesitated. If he was wrong, it would be a most unpleasant way to
die. But there was no alternative. He pushed over the edge into the flame.

The cone tilted sideways, and dropped. Flydd’s heart
spasmed; he was sure they were going to plummet all the way down to the abyssal
source. The cone kept dropping, but he fought it, drawing power – her
power – until his galloping heart seemed about to explode. The cone
rocked left, right, turned upside down, dropping him on top of Colm, then
righted itself and began to bob up and down within the flame.

The burden was even heavier now; Flydd could barely stand up
for the weight, and it was so bright in the flame that he had to cover his
eyes. The firelight was beating against his skin, drying it to a crisp; even
with eyes covered, his mind’s eye was full of green.

It was uncomfortably warm now, and getting warmer, for the
cone, like a greenhouse, was allowing heat in but not letting any out. If he
couldn’t find the way to the surface soon, they would be baked.

A spear shot by, though this time it bounced off the skin of
the cone. Another spear struck it harder, making it slowly rotate. The dissolving
rock above them was falling in heavy drops that slid off the steep sides of the
cone, though the racket was so loud he couldn’t think for it. Flame gusts
buffeted them; it was taking all his strength to keep the cone within the flame
and slowly rising into the roof cavity.

He could smell smouldering hair – his or Colm’s. Even
if his head had been on fire, he didn’t have the energy to slap it out. Rock
collapsed in a deluge; the cone twisted and rolled, throwing him onto Colm
again, then shot up and burst out into an empty tunnel.

Flydd directed it away from the flame, but couldn’t hold it;
it toppled onto its side, rolled around in a curve, and he could finally let
go. The cone vanished; his ears were assailed by the roar of the flame. Cinders
flew in all directions and the air had the blistered, metallic reek of a
foundry.

‘Come on,’ Flydd croaked.

Colm lay on the floor unmoving. Flydd’s cheeks were burning.
He rubbed his hands and the skin rustled like dry paper.

Taking Colm under the arms, he dragged him away from the
flame, around a corner and into blessedly cool, moist darkness. The roar and
crackle were muted here; he could think again. He laid his burning face against
wet rock, rubbed his hands over it and pressed them to the back of his neck.

Colm groaned and kicked a foot.

‘Get up,’ said Flydd. ‘This place is a labyrinth, but
Jal-Nish’s scriers will soon track us down. We’ve got to get to the obelisk
first, or we’ve failed.’

He lifted Colm to his feet. Colm clung to his shoulder and
they lurched into the darkness, moving by feel, since light would be an instant
give-away. Around two more corners and the roar of the flame was just a slow
reverberation of the air, though Flydd could feel it shaking his bones, which,
in the envelope of his renewed self, felt much more sensitive than before.

Colm was recovering now; his fingers no longer clawed into
Flydd’s shoulder and his footfalls were more even. ‘If you ever do anything
like that again,’ he said in a low, emotionless voice, ‘you’re a dead man.’

He wasn’t joking. Below the surface, Colm churned like lava
in the crater of a volcano, and one day he was going to explode.

‘I can hear the abyssal flame again,’ said Colm about
half an hour later, as they felt their way up a sloping ramp of broken stone
seeping with smelly water.

In the distance Flydd made out a faint, booming crackle. ‘So
can I.’

‘That can’t be good.’

‘It’s extremely bad.’ What if it burned all the way up to
the plateau, and the uncanny flame met the cold sludge of the marshes?

Flydd slumped against the side wall, pleased that Colm had
regained his equilibrium, at least. ‘I feel nearly as bad as I did before
renewal.’

‘I feel the way you looked before renewal.’

‘You poor devil!’ Flydd chuckled. ‘I think we can venture a
little light here.’ Pearly glows formed at each of his fingertips, like shining
peas. ‘We can’t be far from the surface now. I can smell the swamp.’

‘It’s a change from smelling you.’ Colm scooped a handful of
muddy water and rubbed it over his face, where it mixed with the dirt, smoke,
flaking skin and old blood.

‘And you stink like you just crawled out of someone’s
coffin,’ said Flydd with a dry snort. When Colm wasn’t wallowing in life’s
injustices he could be good company.

‘Yeah, yours!’ Colm grinned, teeth flashing white in his
filthy face. ‘And damn glad I am to be out of it.’ He inspected the rubble
slope above them, which ended in a hole too small to crawl through. ‘It won’t
be easy to get up there without causing a rockslide. How far does it go, do you
think?’

Flydd shrugged. ‘Could be spans.’

‘Then the rubble will take hours to shift. Which we don’t
have.’

‘We may not even have minutes.’

‘Use the knife, cut a way out.’

‘It’s dead and I can’t recharge it without the flame –
if at all.’

‘Blast a hole with one of your spells, then.’

‘I don’t remember the Art for that. I’m worn out, Colm.
Aftersickness has drained me dry.’ Flydd leaned against the side wall and
allowed the light to fade to tiny fingertip glimmers.

‘I need that,’ said Colm.

Flydd brightened his fingers again. ‘What for?’

‘Where mancery fails us, we’ll have to make do with muscle.’
Colm went up to the blockage and began to tear at the rubble, pulling rocks out
and tossing them down the slope past Flydd.

‘Careful,’ said Flydd. ‘The troops will hear you.’

‘Don’t see as it makes any difference. If we can’t get
through damn quick, we’re done for.’

He wrenched at a cabbage-sized rock in the centre of the
rubble but it wouldn’t budge.

‘It’s like the keystone of an arch,’ said Flydd. ‘Wriggle it
from side to side, carefully, or you’ll bring the lot down on us.’

‘We’re going to die sooner or later,’ Colm said
indifferently.

‘Let’s make it a lot later.’

Colm jerked and heaved, and suddenly it gave, and the rubble
above with it. Flydd, who was several spans further down, scrambled up onto a
little rock ledge. Colm didn’t have time; he turned away and took the blows on
his back. Wheelbarrow-loads of broken rock drove him to his knees, then further
up a blockage gave with a roar and a deluge of smelly mud poured down on him.

Flydd reached down as Colm was washed past and hauled him
out of the flood. He was a cake of stinking ooze matted with rotting reeds, but
he looked cheerful for once.

‘If they didn’t know where we were before, they do now,’
Flydd said dryly.

‘We’ll be out on the plateau in a minute.’

Flydd’s stomach was churning again. Once they got to the
obelisk he must use the woman’s Arts to open the shadow realm, and what would
happen then? Was he no more than a diversion, to be sacrificed so she could
escape her enemy?

The sound of the flame was growing louder again. It was now
a roaring and a cracking, a booming and a blasting and a shattering, as if it
was tearing solid rock to pieces. A spear of pain seared through his chest. He
didn’t think he was having a heart attack, though it might have been less
painful if he was.

He crawled up the mud-clotted rubble to another blockage.
‘Give me a hand with this,’ he panted, trying to prise out a rock without
toppling it on himself.

Clash-clang. ‘Can’t!’ Colm grunted from well below.

Flydd glanced down. The younger man was stabbing at
something, and Flydd caught an occasional flash that might have been eyes or
teeth, though he couldn’t tell if it were man or beast. ‘Don’t let it get past.
We’re nearly there.’

Colm came to his feet, then lunged. There was an inhuman
snarl and he fell backwards onto the slope, but bounced to his feet and lunged
again.

Flydd wrenched at the stone, slid it to one side and was
struck by another deluge, water this time. When it shrank to a malodorous
trickle he saw a faint grey light above.

‘We’re here, Colm.
Colm?
’

‘I’m all right,’ he said breathlessly. ‘Just.’

He clambered up beside Flydd, who smelt blood on him. ‘It
nearly got me, whatever it was,’ Colm added, ‘but I got it first.’

‘Good man.’ They scrambled out into the marshes, the sodden
ground squelching and sinking underfoot. ‘Keep a sharp eye out for
stink-snappers,’ said Flydd in a low voice. ‘We haven’t come all this way to be
eaten by a carnivorous plant.’

‘Give me an honest, savage beast anytime. Can you see
anyone? Brrr!’

Mistmurk Mountain rose from tropical rainforest, but its
flat top stood over a thousand spans high and it was always cold here. Ground
mist lay in a thin blanket over the pools and mires that covered all but the
stony outer rim of the cloverleaf-shaped plateau, though when Flydd stood up
his head poked above the undulating surface of the mist. It was a cloudy night
with just the hint of stars.

‘No, but they’re out there. Jal-Nish will have another army
along the rim.’ Flydd knew he wouldn’t see them from here. They’d be hiding,
waiting.

He scanned the sky and saw nothing. Once we’re spotted, he
thought, it will take them a good while to get here. In that time, he had to
find what he was looking for, and make it work.

He turned around, searching for landmarks. The marsh-lands
were relatively featureless but after nine years on the plateau Flydd knew
every pool, reed and moss-covered rock – like that black outcrop to his
left, shaped like a pointy, half-peeled lemon, where most of the moss had been
grazed off by swamp creepers.

‘This way.’ He began to trudge along the winding strip of
firm ground between the pools and mires. ‘It’s not far to the obelisk.’

The ground quivered, rippling the ponds to either side.
Steam hissed up from the mire ahead; it had a sulphurous stench.

‘I think the flame is getting hotter,’ said Flydd.

The pond beyond was bubbling; a swamp creeper floated upside
down on its surface and the air smelled like boiled meat.

‘I don’t suppose …’ began Colm.

Flydd was salivating too. ‘We haven’t got time,’ he said
regretfully. ‘Besides, that water doesn’t smell too good.’

‘Since it’s probably my last meal, I’ll risk it.’ Colm
skewered the swamp creeper with his sword, hacked it into chunks and sank his
teeth into one. ‘Delicious. Want some?’

‘The way my renewed stomach feels, I won’t risk it.’ Flydd
swallowed mouthfuls of saliva, feeling as though he hadn’t eaten in a week.

On the right, an expanse of black mud was slowly rising.
Only hours ago it had been a large pool, but the last of the water was draining
away, leaving fish and legged eels flapping in the muck. Get moving, or you’ll
suffer the same fate, Flydd told himself, and struggled on.

‘There it is,’ said Colm, belching cheerfully.

‘Quiet!’

The tilted stone obelisk was four or five spans long and
partly covered in moss and trailing feathers of lichen that largely obscured
the ancient Charon symbols engraved into the stone. The growths had been
charred off its upper section by an earlier blast from the sky palace, tilting
the stone and uncovering the opening through which Maelys had first gained
entry to the cursed flame chamber. The obelisk was warm and Flydd could feel
the tingle of power now; the woman in red must have opened him to it.

‘Now I understand. The obelisk forms the solid pole of a
portal. In ages past, she brought the cursed flame here, using the conjunction
between solid stone and ethereal flame to make her portal.’