The Curse on the Chosen (The Song of the Tears Book 2) (4 page)

Flydd ripped the sleeve off his shirt and pulled it over
Nish’s hand. Maelys had to help Flydd tie the knots, for renewal had cost him
his coordination as well as his Art.

‘I can do nothing for the pain, Nish,’ said Flydd. ‘Did you
succeed?’

Nish tried to speak, but his face twisted in another silent
rictus. When it finally passed he tried again. ‘No choice … only way … bolster
clearsight. Think it worked. Take … wrists.’

Flydd took his blistered wrist, Maelys the sound one, and
Nish strained. ‘I see it,’ he slurred. ‘See … way.’

‘How?’ said Flydd urgently. ‘Zham? Colm? Hold the soldiers
off.’

Colm was on his feet, swaying as he attempted to lift Zham.
The giant’s forehead was bloody and he was holding his side. He leaned against
the rear wall and wiped blood out of his eyes with the back of his hand.
Drawing his monstrous blade, he advanced unsteadily across the cavern. ‘I’ll
hold them off as long as I can, surr.’

Tears sprang to Maelys’s eyes, for Zham was utterly
reliable, blindly loyal. She dashed them away. ‘Nish? How am I supposed to give
Xervish back his Art?’

‘Don’t … think – can. He’s got to … take back. But
without Art …’

In other words, it was impossible. ‘Then how do
I
use it?’ She shook his arm in her
agitation.

On the floor, Jal-Nish kicked feebly, then slurred, ‘They’re
coming for us – I warned you they were coming, Son. Why wouldn’t you
listen?’

‘What’s he on about?’ said Colm.

‘Father’s paranoid,’ said Nish. ‘He thinks we’re being
watched by creatures from the void.’

‘Maybe we are,’ said Flydd. ‘That’s where the lyrinx came
from, and they weren’t the first.’

‘Father sees enemies everywhere,’ sneered Nish. ‘The mighty
God-Emperor lives in terror of being overthrown.’

Mocking laughter issued from the roiling surface of Reaper.

‘How do I use the Art?’ Maelys repeated.

Nish’s eyes swam in circles. The pain was killing him. ‘You
… can’t.’

She wanted to scream. ‘Then you’ve maimed yourself for
nothing.’

Nish shook his head. ‘Together,’ he whispered. ‘You’ve … got
to do … it together.’

‘I can’t perform any kind of mind-merge without my Art,’
said Flydd.

‘I don’t know what a mind-merge is,’ said Maelys. ‘Father
stunted my talent when I was little, to save me from the scriers. That’s why he
gave me my taphloid.’

‘Yes!’ cried Flydd. ‘Take it off, quick!’

With her free hand Maelys lifted it over her head, feeling
the wrench that she suffered every time she was forced to remove it. She felt
naked without it, exposed to the world, for her unshielded talent created an
aura which a skilled scrier would detect instantly.

Flydd snatched the taphloid from her hand, holding it by the
chain.

‘I can feel your great gift shining out in all directions,
Maelys,’ said Flydd, ‘beating on me like hot sun on bare skin. You must focus
it on me alone – though not as I am now. Look for the old, decrepit but
true me; the one you met before I took renewal. Try to find that man, no matter
how deep he’s buried.
I
can’t open
the way, but
he
may be able to
– if he still exists.’

Another painful, mocking laugh issued from Reaper. Maelys
restrained an urge to kick it out the entrance.

‘Take my wrist,’ said Nish urgently. ‘They’re coming fast.’

She tried to do what Flydd had asked, but couldn’t see him
at all, for something obscured everything in her inner eye – a heavy,
churning mass of black, burning from the inside out but never consumed, Reaper.
This close, its power was singeing the fine hair on her arms. Reaper longed to
consume her, and it was as corrupt as the man who had created it from the
implosion of the Snizort node all those years ago. Those compressed forces had
distilled everything good and noble out of it, and now it debauched everything
it touched. It longed to corrupt her, to burn her to ashes …

‘Maelys?’ An open hand slapped her hard across the cheek.

She opened her eyes, tore her mind away from Reaper’s pull.
Flydd was glaring at her.

‘You … struck me.’ She touched her fingers to her stinging
cheek.

‘What’s the matter with you?’

‘Reaper!’ She shuddered. ‘It’s too strong; too near. I can’t
resist it; I can’t see anything but Reaper.’

‘Try harder. You’ve got to look beyond it; there’s no other
way.’

There was shouting outside, then the clash of sword on
sword. Zham swayed in the entrance as he fought the first of the crack Imperial
Guard. He had the advantage of height and position, but clearly his broken ribs
were troubling him and he couldn’t hold the enemy off for long.

‘Wait,’ Maelys said. ‘I was wearing my taphloid when I saw
Jal-Nish using Gatherer in the Pit of Possibilities –’

Flydd slapped his hand across her mouth so hard that her
lips stung. They both turned towards Jal-Nish, who was twitching again.

‘It’s coming for us,’ Jal-Nish said. ‘Oh, fire and flame,
it’s coming
!’

She averted her eyes from his ghastly face.

‘I wish you hadn’t mentioned that,’ said Flydd in a low
voice. ‘Reaper may allow Jal-Nish to register what we say, even when he’s
unconscious, and I don’t want him to know what you saw in the Pit.’

It reminded her of the gloomy futures Nish had seen in the
Pit of Possibilities. None of them had contained her; was she destined to die
young, soon,
today
? It shook her. If
her fate was preordained, what was the point of fighting, or indeed,
anything
? No! she thought with a rush of
anger. I refuse to believe it. I will fight on; and I
will
prevail.

Metal clanged on metal. Colm was standing to Zham’s right,
thrusting his blade at a soldier on the plank, just outside. Zham skewered the
man behind him through the neck joint of his armour and twisted his blade out
in a gush of bright blood. The soldier toppled off the wind-shaken plank, but
another stood behind him, and many more behind him. The plank was bowed down
under their weight.

Flydd slipped the taphloid into her hand. ‘Try it!’

Maelys put it around her neck and felt the pressure of
Reaper ease. She closed her eyes and tried to blank everything out save her
memory of the old Flydd. It was hard, for there was so much to intrude –
the thump of sword on armour, the grunts and screams of the fighting soldiers,
and the howling updraught, which always picked up as the day drew on. Nish,
beside her, was panting like a woman in labour from the escalating agony of his
burned hand. Most distracting of all, she kept catching whiffs of the rotting
flesh of Jal-Nish’s terrible face.

Fyllis, splayed on the wall of Jal-Nish’s torture chamber.
That image helped her to focus on what had to be done – find the real
Flydd. She felt the strength of his hand around her wrist and imagined it to be
the old man’s feebler grip.

It was working. Now she remembered him as she’d first seen
him, just days ago: drinking and laughing with Nish on the rickety bench
outside his amber-wood hut. She’d envied them their easy camaraderie and their
long friendship, for she’d felt alone and abandoned since Nifferlin Manor had
been torn down.

Flydd had led her out into the stink-snapper-infested
marshes and questioned her about the most intimate and embarrassing details of
her travels with Nish. Later, she remembered Flydd’s fury as she had pressured
him to take renewal. If she’d had an inkling of what it would do to him, she
would never have opened her mouth.

Colm gasped and stumbled backwards, holding his left
shoulder. Blood was seeping through his fingers. ‘Just a scratch,’ he said
through gritted teeth, though the gash was as long as his little finger.

Zham swung his blade back and forth, sweeping another of the
Imperial Guard off the plank, the man’s helmeted head flying right and his body
toppling to the left. Colm gripped his sword in bloody fingers and returned to
his position. They were safe for another minute.

She conjured up that first memory again: Flydd, barely tipsy
at all, laughing with a sozzled Nish. It felt like a lifetime ago. She tried to
see into Flydd, to understand what drove him, good and bad. How had he held to
his purpose despite being trapped at the top of Mistmurk Mountain for nine
years, knowing that his plan to free Nish from prison had come to naught?

Flydd had never given up; moreover, he had maintained his
sense of humour and that ferocious will to fight on, no matter the cost. He
reminded her of her father, Rudigo, who had been forced to flee from Jal-Nish’s
vicious lieutenant, Seneschal Vomix, when she was little. Rudigo, whose
tortured body now lay in the anonymous burial grounds behind Mazurhize. That
was her fault too, for as a child she’d unwittingly insulted Vomix and it had
drawn attention to her family’s gifts.

Suddenly she saw Flydd – the real Flydd – just
for a second, and again felt that burning sensation surrounding her heart and
flowing down her arm to where his fingers clenched like an iron manacle. Nish
stiffened and tried to pull away from her other hand, but she maintained the
contact even though her head was spinning and her knees had gone weak. Must
– hold – on. Must hold –

She was lying on the floor with Nish bending over her.
Maelys felt cold now, to her very core; frozen and empty. The taphloid was
lying beside her and she reached out for the comfort of it.

‘I’ve got back a trace of my Art,’ said Flydd. ‘I can see
the way!’

He turned towards the rear wall, the fifth crystal shining
through his fingers, and reached out between the columns. A dazzling flash lit
up the cavern; the crystal burst and fiery shards flew out in a fan, though all
were extinguished when they hit the hidden door, as if it had drawn the power
from them.

One glowing fragment flew straight up, bounced off the roof
and curved down in an arc towards Maelys, landing on her stomach. Had Flydd
taken back all his Art, or was part of it still trapped in her? She didn’t feel
any different. The shard was useless, but she slipped it into the empty crystal
compartment of her taphloid and waited for the door to open.

It did not.

More malicious laughter issued from Reaper as Jal-Nish
groaned and came to his knees, unmasked and grotesque. ‘You think you can best
me that easily?’ he said in a slurred voice. ‘Even unconscious, I was more than
your match, Xervish.’

With a bellow of rage, Nish leapt at his father. The
uppercut started at floor level and ended with a sickening crack on the point
of Jal-Nish’s scarred jaw, lifting him off his feet, for Nish had hit him with
all the pent-up fury of his ten years of imprisonment. Jal-Nish landed on his
back in the moss, eyes open, but so deeply unconscious that Reaper’s surface
went still. The clanging started again. The Imperial Guards on the copper plank
let out a collective roar. A sword rang on Zham’s greatsword.

‘Xervish?’ said Nish, his battered knuckles bleeding onto
the moss and his bandaged hand dripping yellow fluid. ‘
This can’t all have been for nothing!
’

‘It’s over, Nish old friend,’ Flydd said gently. ‘That
crystal was special; I spent years priming it to crack into the shadow realm,
and protect us while we were there, and without it we’ve lost. As I said on one
other memorable occasion, we must face our end with dignity.’

Maelys had read that tale when she was little. Flydd was
referring to the time during the lyrinx war when he and his allies had been
taken by the corrupt Council of Scrutators in their attack on Fiz Gorgo. After
a show trial on a great canvas amphitheatre erected many spans above the roof
of the stronghold, all its people had been set to be executed there.

‘I didn’t hear you say it,’ whispered Nish. ‘I was trapped
below in the burning tower.’

She’d read his part of the tale many times. In one of the
greatest feats of heroism in all the Histories, Nish had cunningly attacked the
scrutators and their hundreds of crack guards, rescued the prisoners and, with
their aid, had turned ruinous defeat into an unimaginable victory, which had
turned the tide of the hopeless lyrinx war and, two years later, had led to
that astonishing, yet noble, triumph over the alien enemy. Maelys, reliving the
tale, realised that she could forgive Nish almost everything because of the
hero he had once been, and might be again.

Looking at him now, she could see that he was in agony, but
he endured it in silence; he could show no weakness to an enemy who would
ruthlessly exploit it.

‘And you saved us all,’ said Flydd, deep in a recovered
memory.

‘To die at my hands –’ slurred Jal-Nish from the
floor.

How had he roused so quickly? Maelys tasted despair this
time; he could never be beaten.

Flydd forced a clump of moss into Jal-Nish’s mouth with the
toe of his boot. Jal-Nish fell silent, though his fingers kept moving. Reaper’s
surface rippled and Zham staggered backwards, falling against Colm and driving
him to his knees.

Flydd stamped on Jal-Nish’s fingers, but too late. With a
single bound, a giant of a warrior sprang from the plank onto the sill of the
cavern. He was almost as big as Zham, brandishing a cutlass in one hand and a
rapier in the other, and cutting and stabbing faster than the eye could follow.
Zham came upright but his injuries had weakened him and some of the rapier
blows were getting through. He was soon speckled with blood in a dozen places.

The cutlass flashed out to the left. Zham parried, but the
warrior lunged and stabbed his rapier half a hand-span into Zham’s mighty
thigh. His leg wobbled and he nearly went down.

‘Zham?’ cried Maelys, seeing blood pouring down his leg.
Something whirred in front of her; she did not see what it was.

With furious blows, Zham drove the warrior backwards onto
the plank. Behind him a line of soldiers waited their turn, and many more were
at the railings of the sky palace. The greatest hero in the world could not
defeat them all. Maelys felt sick, for the end was inevitable now.