The Curse on the Chosen (The Song of the Tears Book 2) (23 page)

Flydd held the phial containing the cursed flame against his
forehead, hoping that it would wake his lost Art so he would not have to rely
on the woman’s ominous mancery, but nothing came to him. Before renewal he’d
known how to open the shadow realm; he had rehearsed Rassitifer’s spell many
times in case he’d needed to use it in an emergency, but that memory had not
returned.

It left no alternative but to follow her perilous procedure.
Dare he?

‘Flydd!’ choked Colm. ‘Do something.’

Flydd twisted the bung out of the phial and touched a
fingertip to the wisp of cursed flame coming from the top. His finger began to
go rigid, but a little charm – one of hers – came into his mind to
prevent the paralysis. He worked it and gingerly touched his finger to his
forehead. Heat twisted in, like a corkscrew; faded.

He tried to draw power from the flame the way he had seen
her doing it, but nothing came to him. ‘Why isn’t it working?’

‘Maybe
he’s
blocking
you.’ Colm glanced up at the sky palace, shivered, then slid down to the base
of the obelisk and scrubbed mud off his blade with a handful of reeds.

‘Could Jal-Nish be blocking
her
Art? How could he understand what he’s never seen before?’

‘Perhaps the tears allow him to understand all powers.’

‘If he’d understood the flame, he would have ordered his
scriers to use it against me down below.’

‘Unless he’s playing with you,’ said Colm. ‘He does love to
torment his victims.’

‘Jal-Nish never puts personal pleasures ahead of his own
safety. I’m a threat to him, so he’ll secure me first, or kill me. Perhaps I
need more power. She used a mere wisp of the cursed flame, but it’s her Art and
she could be subtle. I don’t have time for subtlety.’

‘There may be a reason for it,’ said Colm. ‘The portal spell
may be dangerous.’

‘No doubt it is, though hardly more than
him
.’

Flydd glanced up at the sky palace. It was measurably lower
than before, and the abyssal flame, roaring ever higher, might have been seen a
hundred leagues away. The next few minutes would determine what kind of a
symbol it became in the Histories – a beacon of hope, or a mark of
despair.

He drew out the bung but this time touched the rim of the
phial to his forehead. The shock was like a heated auger boring into his skull,
but when it passed, the portal spell had not worked. If only he still had the
fifth crystal, the most powerful of all. He’d primed it years ago and it would
almost have opened the path into the shadow realm by itself, had he not lost
the power to set the spell off. If he’d had it, he could have thumbed his nose
at her and whatever she wanted from him.

Wishing was futile. He had to have more power, far more than
was held in this tiny phial. Dare he draw upon the power of the abyssal flame
itself? The power now being wasted, flaming into the heavens, must be enough to
open the shadow realm a thousand times. Assuming he could draw upon it without
killing himself; and let the whole damn world go to ruin if he failed!

Vivimord was creeping across the marshes, dragging Nish
through the mud behind him, and Maelys followed as closely as she dared. She
would not be heard in the roar of the flame, but she would be clearly visible
in its lurid light if Vivimord glanced back.

He topped a small rise, then crouched in a hollow, out of
sight. What was he up to? She crawled after him, wishing she still had the
rapier and fantasising shockingly about sticking it in one side of him and out
the other. She hadn’t gone far when an unpleasantly familiar sound swept
towards her,
flutter-flap
. It was a
flappeter, the most fearsome of all Jal-Nish’s flesh-formed creations. Maelys
went still and kept her head low, glad of the camouflaging mud that covered her
from head to toe.

The flappeter cruised over her and kept going. Maelys slowly
lifted her head. She could see the obelisk clearly now, and a man’s outline at
the top: Flydd! Her eyes pricked with tears of relief. He was alive!

His arms were upraised as if he were attempting mancery. She
stood up carefully, fists clenched, for the flappeter could pluck him off
before he realised it was there. She was about to shout a warning when he swung
his arm backwards; green fire stabbed at the creature, which swerved wildly,
almost crashed into the swamp, then began to climb away, smoke rising from its
lower feather-rotor.

It had taken a lot out of Flydd, though. He was bent double,
choking or throwing up, and the peril had not gone away. A flock of
bladder-bats descended, and lights were advancing from every direction –
the Imperial Militia were coming. As she watched, Vivimord disappeared behind
the column of flame.

She had to warn Flydd about Vivimord, though Maelys couldn’t
see how to do so without alerting him to her presence. She crept on, keeping
low, and was edging past the fury roaring up from a circle burned through the
marsh when she smelt the ghastly odour of perfumed oil and rotting entrails,
and was caught from behind in two oily hands.

‘Slybbily meee,’ slurred dead Phrune, licking pieces of intestine
off his green lips.

 
EIGHTEEN

Flydd wiped his mouth as he watched the flappeter climb
away, knowing he hadn’t done it much damage. It would soon be back, if the
bladder-bats or wing-rays didn’t get him first.

‘Get on with it,’ Colm said from the ground.

Flydd spat over the side. ‘My mouth tastes like something a
stink-snapper has been digesting for a week.’

Colm chuckled. ‘That’s another death to look forward to, if
Jal-Nish doesn’t get us first.’

Flydd managed a smile. ‘I’ll try the portal spell again,
though I’m sure I did it perfectly last time …’ Unless he was missing
something. He had attempted it three times now, and felt blocked each time. He
simply could not draw on the monstrous power of the abyssal flame. There had to
be another way.

The woman in red had used the flame during his renewal
hallucination; he now remembered what she’d done, but still he could not get it
to work. She was using him to do something she could not do herself, and yet he
had no choice. He didn’t think she was on the God-Emperor’s side, or
Vivimord’s.

He was going through his memories of her, trying to see if
he’d missed anything, when he noticed something she had avoided thinking about
earlier; something she hadn’t wanted him to discover. Whatever she was hiding,
it had to do with the power she’d considered using a while back, then rejected
because it was too dangerous. Dare
he
try? It could hardly be more dangerous than allowing Jal-Nish to win.

He explored the memory she’d tried to hide. Whatever this
new power was, it lay buried deep below Mistmurk Mountain, at the base of a
narrow, ring-shaped shaft bored through a thousand spans of rock down to the
source of the vapour which fed the abyssal flame. The source was concealed by
that flame, and hidden below the centre of the hearth from which it emanated.

Flydd whipped out the bung of the stone bottle in which he’d
captured some of the abyssal flame; it flickered greenly black over the lip. He
hesitated for a moment, doubting himself, then swiftly upturned the bottle
against his forehead for a second and thrust the bung back in.

Bone-grinding, scalding pain tore into his head; sickening
waves followed it, slowly fading. He closed his eyes, and it was as though a
door had slid open at the base of the mountain, and a hatch swung back at the
centre of the abyssal flame’s hearth, to reveal what lay beneath.

It wasn’t the source of the abyssal flame at all, nor of the
vapours that fed it. It was a small rectangular box made from clear crystal
– cut from a single diamond, perhaps – and within it he saw the
faintest movement. There was something white inside; small and white and
restless. Flydd did not see how it could hold the power he so desperately
needed; power to overcome whatever was blocking him and blast open the entrance
of the shadow realm, but there had to be a good reason why it had been hidden
so carefully.

Dare he? He’d die if he didn’t. And it probably wouldn’t
work anyway.

He traced out the way of power – the way to use the
abyssal flame and open that box,
her
way. At the moment he had that thought, the flame brightened and roared higher.
Flydd shuddered at what he was about to do, but he was going to do it anyway.

Using the abyssal flame as a focus, he reached down, down,
down to the very core from which it came, to the hearth through which the
vapours that fed it issued. Using the power of the abyssal flame against
itself, he spun it into a spiral, ever tighter, until it formed an irresistible
emerald spear. He took that spear and hurled it down through the hearth,
cleaving it in two.

The halves of the hearth fell to either side and the spear
continued down, directed with unerring aim, until it struck the top of the
little diamond box, met resistance, and overpowered it. The lid shattered, the
webbed and layered protections inside it tore, and a small white flame was
released. It was such a tiny flicker that Flydd felt sure he was the butt of a
monstrous joke. How could that be the power he was looking for?

Nooo!
screamed the
woman in red into his mind, so desperately that he felt her throat tear and
tasted blood in the back of his mouth.
Not
the chthonic flame, you fo
ol.

Too late! He had committed a mancer’s most cardinal sin.
He’d used power without knowing what he was doing, and there was no way to fix
it now – the chthonic flame, whatever
that
was, was out of its box, and every one of its protections had been broken.

He had to keep going now, and quickly. The next step was to
form the structure that would become the portal’s entrance. It would shelter
them from the raw power needed to open the woman’s long-closed portal and
direct it to the shadow realm. Could he do it? Making portals was one of the
greatest Arts of all, one that few master mancers from the Histories had ever
done successfully. And even with
her
knowledge, Flydd began to doubt himself.

What shape should the entrance take? In mancery, such things
mattered, and if he gave it the same shape as the woman had used when she’d
made her portal long ago, resonances of time and place would make this one
easier to create. Flydd closed his eyes, opened himself to her memories and saw
spirals everywhere: on the obelisk, down at the altar, and even in her
memories. That had to be it. Taking power from the abyssal flame for the last
time, he focused it, used her portal spell, and its entrance slowly whirled
into physical form around the base of the obelisk.

It looked like pale red glass, and had a central dome from
out of which spiralled four narrow arms, so elongated that each wrapped around
the dome several times. Why four arms? The spirals down below had all been
two-armed. He touched the glassy wall but felt nothing; it was just an image,
yet to take on physical form.

The roaring abyssal flame suddenly broke into a series of
flares, as though its conduit were trying to cough something up. As if that had
been a signal, the Imperial Militia must have broken into a run, because the
steadily moving lanterns drawing in from the edges of the plateau began to
jiggle. The troops were converging on him and getting into position to attack.
The flock of bladder-bats let out a massed squeal and dived.

The green flame coughed twice more and died down, plunging
the plateau into darkness. In the sudden silence Flydd could hear his ears
ringing. Pain gnawed the centre of his chest; acid rose up his throat. Had the
flame gone out completely? If it had, he’d made a catastrophic blunder.

‘What’s going on?’ said Colm, shivering. ‘What have you
done, Flydd?’

‘I don’t know.’

The abyssal flame suddenly belched higher than before,
rushing up past the sky palace and buffeting that monstrous structure like
washing on a clothes line. The flame went transparent, almost invisible in the
darkness; the pain in his chest was like teeth chewing on his lungs, then the
flame turned a brilliant, icy white. That tiny chthonic flame, fuelled by the
vapours seeping from deep below the mountain, had grown into a conflagration.
Flydd was paralysed by the horror of what he’d created, and he had an awful
feeling that they were all going to pay for his folly.

‘No,’ he whispered. ‘No, no!’

‘I don’t see how you could have made things any worse,’ said
Colm, standing with his arms crossed protectively over his chest, looking up.

This flame was freezing; Flydd could feel it from a
distance. Ice began forming around the edges of the vent and growing upwards in
jagged arrays of crystals. He felt just as cold inside, but there was no going
back now.

‘Things can always get worse.’ He headed towards the vent.
‘Very much worse.’

‘Flydd?’ cried Colm. ‘We’re almost within range of the
soldiers’ spears.’

‘I need fire.’

He didn’t want to go near it; he definitely didn’t want to
carry it back. The chthonic fire must have been hidden for a reason and he
recalled the woman’s fear of it. And if she was afraid, he should be more so,
but the abyssal flame was gone and he had no choice.

He churned through the mud, which had baked hard in some
places, was deep and liquid in others, yet near the edge of the flame was
already freezing solid. The ice around the edges of the vent had a peculiar
pale green tint. Could it be used to contain chthonic fire?

Flydd reached out and gingerly touched his bent knife to a
tendril of chthonic flame. The knife went white and made alarming cracking
sounds, but held. He carved an oval flask from the peculiar green ice and held
it out on the point of the knife until it was full of fire; the knife became so
cold that its hilt stuck to his fingers. He thrust the stoppered flask inside
his coat with the others, where he could feel the cold burning. Flydd swiftly
cut a second flask, pyramidal this time, filled it and stowed it as well. He’d
done as much as he could.