The Curse on the Chosen (The Song of the Tears Book 2) (70 page)

‘I don’t understand,’ said Nish. ‘Where did –?’

‘There’s no time for this,’ she said urgently. ‘I learned
four days ago that Curr was a traitor. He led you astray, delayed you so the
enemy could reach the pass first. Blisterbone is strongly garrisoned and you
could not take it with five times the troops you have. You must retreat all the
way to the lowlands, not stopping day or night, or you won’t survive.’

‘We’ve got no food, and they’ll cut us off before we can get
down to our track.’

‘There’s still a chance,’ said Tulitine. ‘They don’t know you’re
here.’

‘They must. Curr has been gone for ages.’

‘I know, for the birds spoke to me, and the wind in the
trees, that he was set on betrayal. I followed him; came upon him in the dark
so silently that he didn’t know I was there.’ Her unclouded eyes were bright in
the dripping shade. ‘I broke my solemn healer’s oath, cut him down from behind
and wrung the truth out of him before he died. He had not yet given you away.
The cur will do no more betraying – and I no more healing. I am no longer
worthy. Call your troops.’ She turned away, head bowed and looking her age
again.

Nish whistled; shortly Gi and Hoshi appeared. ‘Curr’s
betrayed us. Retreat to the track we came up, and keep low.’

Gi and Hoshi ran, but the militia had just reached the
clearing when an army horn echoed back and forth across the bowl-shaped valley.
Another joined it from the lower rim. And Nish’s force did not carry horns. His
marrow went cold.

‘They must have spotted you from the lookout above the
pass,’ said Tulitine.

‘And they’ll be quick down the ridges.’ Nish suppressed the
panic, trying to think. ‘We may be able to get out the lower end of the valley
before they close it off, if we run.’

‘I don’t know this valley.’

‘The river cuts through a cliff-bound ravine with a natural
arch across it. We can scramble through the ravine beside the water. Come on.’

Before they had skirted the clearing, however, Nish could
see hundreds of soldiers moving down both ridges, making no effort to conceal
themselves. The enemy must have been watching them for hours.

‘They’re moving faster than we are,’ said Gi, heaving one
boot out of calf-deep mud. ‘They’ll be at the stone bridge before we’re
halfway.’

Nish called a halt, watching his father’s men moving around
the edges of the bowl as if they owned the world. Gi was right. They couldn’t
get out through the ravine, nor over the ridges, and the top of the valley
ended in an unclimbable cliff running all the way up to the white-thorn
mountain. There was nowhere to go.

‘Raise a surrender flag, Gi. One single life lost in a
hopeless cause is too many.’ Nish had trouble meeting her clear young eyes, for
she was going to die; all his cheerful, friendly soldiers were. When Jal-Nish
made an example of Gendrigore, everyone would die, save Nish.

Gi ran back to give the orders. Tulitine seemed even younger
now; the faint wrinkles that had been at the corners of her eyes half an hour
ago were gone, and her skin was smoother and paler, as if she’d lived her life
indoors.

‘The Regression Spell is still
younging
me,’ she said with a faraway smile, ‘though it doesn’t
have far to run now.’

‘And then?’

‘I’ll reach a certain age, about thirty-five, and maintain
it for a week, perhaps even a month, after which I’ll slowly and painfully
revert. Everything has a price, and the Regression Spell has a particularly
cruel one.’ She shuddered and clenched her small fists. ‘It’s no use; there’s
only one way to avert the catastrophe –’

Nish began to speak but she gestured him to silence.

‘Which I helped to create by speaking in riddles, to avoid
breaking my healer’s oath and facing up to what had to be done. I must call on
the one person I loathe more than any other – the one I swore never to
turn to, no matter how bitter my circumstances.’

‘Who’s that?’ said Nish, the skin of his back crawling.

‘My terrible grandmother!’

She turned around several times, eyes closed, her beautiful
face turned up to the drenching rain until it cascaded off her cheeks and chin.
Her lips moved. More soldiers were lining up along the ridges, waiting for
something, or
someone
. Jal-Nish?

‘I can’t see her at all,’ Tulitine burst out. ‘She’s cut me
off. Why would she do that?’

Nish’s faint hope sank again, until he took in the emphasis
in her words. ‘Who can you see?’

‘It – it feels like Maelys.’

‘Maelys!’ She was still alive, and that mattered, not just
because she might be carrying his child. He understood her so much better now,
and what drove her to do all she had done. ‘Why would you see Maelys, of all
people?’

‘I cannot say. I haven’t used this spell in ninety years
– near half my lifetime.
And it
wasn’t answered that time, either
,’ she said under her breath. ‘What should
I do? I’m at a loss. I’ll call her. At least if we all die here, someone will
know what’s happened to us.’

Tulitine stood still for several minutes, her lips moving.
More soldiers appeared on the ridges every minute.

The air crackled; a miniature bolt of lightning fizzed above
their heads. Nish jumped; Hoshi let out a squeal; Tulitine broke off her
murmuring.

A yellow sausage exploded into being twenty or thirty paces
away in the clearing, expanded hugely and a puckered sphincter formed in its
end.
Rrrrippp
. A hurricane of
freezing air burst forth, hurling everyone off their feet; mist eddies spun in
all directions like miniature tornadoes; bodies were ejected from the sphincter
one by one – people wearing thick, fleecy clothes and furs covered in a
layer of frost.

Nish had landed on his back in the mud and felt the tip of
his nose and the lobes of his ears go numb, then the mud began to freeze around
him. He looked up to the most astonishing sight – snow settling over the
rainforest as a myriad of frost-covered people skidded down the wet slope,
clutching swords and spears made from crystalline ice. They were looking back
fearfully at the place where the portal had opened, but it could no longer be
seen.

About thirty-five people had come through, half men and half
women, and most had unnaturally pale skin, as if they had not seen the sun in
many years. His gaze swung across their faces and he started.

‘Xervish?’ Flydd looked much as Nish had last seen him,
except that his face was even more bruised and swollen than Nish’s own. ‘What
are you doing here?’

‘I should ask you the same question, but at least I know
where we are,’ for he recognised the white-thorn mountain. Flydd gestured at a
very tall, well-built man who was climbing to his feet, frost melting off him.

It was a long time since Nish had shed tears of joy, but now
he felt his eyes prickling at the sight of his old friend. Yggur had been one
of the greatest mancers of all, and he hadn’t aged a day in ten years. Surely
with Yggur and Flydd they could find a way out of the trap. ‘Well met; oh, well
met! Tulitine, it’s
Yggur
! Where did
you come from?’

Flydd answered. ‘The Island of Noom, in the Frozen Sea, and
the Numinator’s Tower of a Thousand Steps. And we didn’t get what we went there
for, since I’m sure you’re about to ask.’

‘I couldn’t care less,’ said Nish, his heart singing. ‘Open
the portal again and get us out of here.’

 
FIFTY

Maelys, thrown out of the portal onto a grassy slope in
a deluge, went sliding down on her back in the middle of a freezing cloud and
splashed into a dip full of water, which froze all around her. She tried to sit
up but was stuck fast.

There were hundreds of armed men above her, a rustic
mud-drenched army dressed in homespun. She jerked upright and broke free, for
the ice was melting again. The frost dissolved and suddenly she was sweltering
in her heavy clothing.

She threw off her furs, and all around her the rescued
prisoners were doing the same, their ice weapons melting on the saturated
ground. Maelys looked up and Nish was just five paces away, staring at her. He
looked as if he’d been hit in the face with a brick, but she was glad to see
him. Behind him stood a tall woman who looked rather like Tulitine, save that
she was at least forty years too young, and very beautiful.

‘Is this the help you were looking for?’ said Nish to
Tulitine.

The woman who looked like Tulitine shook her head. Maelys
scanned the people who had come from the portal. Neither Yalkara nor the
Numinator were among them and, for the first time since going back to the
Nightland, she dared to hope that she might get away from her enemies.

‘It’s wonderful to see you, of course,’ Nish said to Flydd
and Yggur, grinning all over his face, ‘but surely you didn’t
plan
to hurl yourself into Father’s
trap.’

Flydd slowly rotated, his boots sinking into the muddy
grass, as he took in the enemy army lined up along the ridges. His mouth opened
and closed. Maelys, following his gaze, felt her stomach cramp. She’d hoped too
soon.

‘Well done, Yggur,’ Flydd said hoarsely. ‘You’ve excelled
yourself this time.’

‘You made the bloody portal!’ Yggur laughed, though there
was no mirth in it. ‘How Jal-Nish will crow. All his enemies in one bag, and we
climbed into it willingly.’

Maelys closed her eyes. Surely this was her punishment for
all the wrongs she’d done, the lies she’d told, the little deceits she’d
employed to get her way over the past months. Oh Emberr, Emberr, why did I go
back?

‘It was close, though,’ said Nish. ‘Had our guide not
betrayed us we would have beaten them to the pass, and Father would have had
the fight of a lifetime prising us out. We might even have turned him back;
another victory on the long road to casting him off his throne.’

‘I’ll call again,’ said Tulitine, turning her face up to the
rain.

Maelys couldn’t take her eyes off her. It could not be
Tulitine, yet it was.

‘Surrender!’ boomed an amplified voice from the higher
ridge, and Maelys jumped. ‘My name is General Klarm. I am commander of the
God-Emperor’s forces here. Surrender and I give you my word that you will not
be harmed. Fight on and you will be slain to the last man and woman, all save Cryl-Nish
Hlar and Maelys Nifferlin.’

‘I thought he died on Mistmurk Mountain,’ said Maelys.

‘Evidently Jal-Nish saved his miserable skin.’ Flydd turned
to Yggur. ‘I told you Klarm went over to the enemy,’ he said bitterly. ‘Listen
to him crow, the puffed up little runt.’

‘You’ll soon topple Jal-Nish from his post as the God of
Liars, Flydd.’ Colm rose from the grass, dripping mud and glowering. ‘Klarm
twice told you that he did not take Jal-Nish’s side until after he’d won.’

‘And you believed him?’ cried Flydd.

‘I did. I believed you, too, fool that I am, and you
betrayed me in the hour of my greatest need. Klarm is an honourable man and I
intend to surrender to him.’

‘He’ll shoot you down like a dog,’ Flydd hissed.

‘What have I got to lose? You treated me worse than I would
ever treat a dog.’

‘Colm, no!’ cried Maelys.

He spat in her direction, raised his hands and shouted, ‘My
name is Colm. I surrender.’ He walked slowly across the clearing in the
direction of Klarm’s voice. Maelys put her head in her hands, sure they would
shoot Colm down.

‘Your surrender is accepted, Colm of Gothryme. Stand well to
one side,’ called Klarm. ‘Flydd, Yggur, my old friends, you cannot escape.’

‘Make another portal, Flydd,’ Yggur whispered.

‘I used all my white fire for the last one.’

‘Try the damn mimemule.’

‘Without power, I don’t know how to make it work.’ Yggur
cursed. ‘Once Klarm comes down, what say we wrest his knoblaggie from him,
crack off these bracelets with it and reopen the portal?’

‘As if he won’t have thought of that,’ Flydd said sourly.

Tulitine was standing face-up to the sky, her lips moving
ceaselessly. ‘Why won’t you come, grandmother?’

‘Because you’re no use to her,’ said Yggur brutally. ‘A
Regression Spell may have temporarily given you back your youth, but it cannot
allow an old woman to bear children, and they’re the only thing the Numinator
is interested in.’

‘The Numinator is your
grandmother
?’
said Maelys to Tulitine. ‘Then you must be the only child of –’

‘It is I, Liel, daughter of your firstborn, Illiel,’ called
Tulitine. ‘I am the only kin you have – does that mean nothing to you?’

‘Look out!’ yelled Nish.

A hissing sound, like a boiling kettle, grew ever louder,
and a platform the size of Rulke’s Nightland bed scooted down the ridge and came
skimming across the treetops towards them. A number of tall men stood at the
back and sides, clad in white armour – Jal-Nish’s Imperial Guard. Before
them stood the God-Emperor, wearing his platinum half-mask again; the humming
tears were looped around his neck on their chain. At his right hand was a
handsome dwarf clad in a red and black military uniform, General Klarm. His
mane of hair was sheared off in a flat plane across the top of his head, as if
it had been burned away.

The air-sled began to shudder violently as it passed over
the point where the portal had opened, and Jal-Nish set it down hastily on the
grass. Along the ridges, the soldiers trained their arrows at the militia, and
particularly at Flydd and Yggur.

Maelys, feeling as if every arrow was aimed at her,
instinctively moved closer to Nish.

‘I know how you feel.’ He put his left arm around her
shoulders as though they were old friends and the past had been forgotten, and
Maelys felt strangely warmed by the gesture. How she needed a friend.

Nish raised his voice and spoke to his militia. ‘My friends,
you did everything I asked of you, but we’ve been beaten by a stronger foe.
Your service is over. Run or stay, as you wish. Some of you may break through.’