The Destiny of the Dead (The Song of the Tears Book 3) (10 page)

‘An all-too-common story, but some of us cope better with it
than others.’

‘Did you say
Gothryme
?’
said Yggur, staring at Maelys.

‘Yes. Do you know of the place?’

‘I stayed there a number of times, at the end of the Time of
the Mirror, and afterwards.’

‘Then you may have known Colm’s ancient relatives, Karan and
Llian.’

‘Indeed I did,’ said Yggur, and his frosty eyes grew hard.
‘We became friends, at the end.’

‘Colm said that they were famous once, and heroes, but they
committed terrible crimes and became known as –’

‘Karan Kin-Slayer and Llian the Liar!’ Yggur ground out, his
voice tight with rage. ‘Don’t say another word about them.’

Maelys jumped. What was the matter with him? Had they
betrayed him in some way? Even if they had, they had died two centuries ago, so
why was he still so angry?

‘Colm couldn’t bear that shame,’ she said quietly. ‘He
refused to believe it.’ Maelys touched Colm’s brow with her fingertips, then
turned away. ‘There’s no sign of Nish. Let’s get going. I hate this place!’

The whistling note of the air-sled sounded from downstream.
‘Quick, back to the forest,’ said Yggur. ‘Klarm is coming upriver. He has to
think we’re all dead – it’s our only chance.’

‘He’s lost his army,’ said Maelys as they hurried towards
the shelter of the rainforest. ‘How could he come after us?’

‘They were just the advance guard. His main army is enormous
and as soon as he can bring it across the pass he’ll scour every ell of this
valley, and the river downstream, and check every body. He has to make sure of
us, and Nish, and you, Maelys.’

‘I thought you were going to try and capture Klarm,’ said
Tulitine.

‘In my condition, I don’t see how I can. Besides, something
else has just occurred to me.’

‘Care to share it with us?’ snapped Tulitine. The pain was
getting to her.

‘I will, once I understand it myself. Come on.’

They kept to the shallow water pooled along the narrow
floodplain beside the riverbank until they reached the forest, where Yggur led
them to the upper track, then along it. Maelys followed in silence, numb with
grief. Nish and Flydd were dead, almost certainly, Colm definitely, and it
seemed as though the entire militia had been wiped out. With Yggur so weak,
Tulitine crippled by the failing Regression Spell, and the really wet season
coming, how could they hope to survive?

‘Where are we going?’ she said as they re-entered the upper
clearing.

‘Back to the caduceus,’ said Yggur.

Maelys stopped dead. ‘Again? We’ve already been there
twice.’

‘It’s still calling me.’

‘Then we should run as fast as we can in the opposite
direction.’

‘I think it wants something.’

‘I’m sure it does,’ Maelys muttered, ‘and it’s not to our
good.’

‘Why do you say that?’ said Yggur, stopping to give Tulitine
his arm, for she was walking ever more painfully.

‘Stilkeen took Jal-Nish, and threatened us,’ said Maelys.
‘And every time I’ve gone near the caduceus, my taphloid shuddered or grew
warm. I’m afraid it is trying to attack it,
or
me
…’ Now that’s odd, she thought, remembering that Stilkeen hadn’t seemed
to see her.

‘Why would it want to attack
you
?’ said Yggur, as though she was utterly insignificant.

Tulitine moved on and he went with her. Maelys trudged after
them, so afraid that she could barely stand up.

‘The more important question,’ said Tulitine, gasping as she
struggled across the slippery slope, ‘is why Stilkeen left the caduceus here.’

They stopped at the edge of the baked ground. The caduceus
had lost its previous orange heat and was now a black, rough-edged iron shaft
with two small wings at the top, and the two long black serpents loosely coiled
around it.

‘As a threat,’ said Yggur, holding the taphloid in his fist
and frowning. ‘You were right, Maelys. It’s shuddering as though it’s trying to
break free. Does it do that often?’

‘Only when it’s near the caduceus,’ said Maelys.

‘A threat?’ said Tulitine. ‘That’s not how I read it.’

‘How do you read it?’ said Yggur, gazing at her as though
he’d just seen her true beauty for the first time.

‘As an offer,’ said Tulitine, frowning at him and stepping
away.

‘Why would Stilkeen offer us anything?’

Tulitine did not reply. She appeared to find Yggur’s fixed
regard uncomfortable.

‘To help it get what
it
wants?’ guessed Maelys. ‘The chthonic fire.’

‘You may be right,’ Yggur mused. ‘We know that Stilkeen
needs chthonic fire so it can rejoin with the spirits severed from its physical
self – its revenants now trapped in the shadow realm. Do you think, since
it took Jal-Nish hostage and demanded chthonic fire in return, that it’s
incapable of finding any itself?’

‘It makes sense,’ said Tulitine, ‘but even so, what are we
supposed to do with the caduceus?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Is it still hot?’

Yggur moved the back of his right hand slowly towards the
shaft until it touched. ‘It’s blood warm, but I can’t sense anything in it.
What can you see with your gift, Tulitine?’

With eyes closed, she extended a slender, blue-veined hand
towards the shaft. ‘I see us all holding it.’

‘Here?’

‘No,’ she said slowly, as though it was taking time to see
clearly.

‘Then where are we?’

‘I can’t tell, though we’re surrounded by swirling dust.’

‘There’s no dust on the Range of Ruin, or anywhere near it,’
Yggur pointed out. ‘I can feel my clothes rotting by the minute.’

‘Then it has to be a trap,’ said Maelys.

‘Stilkeen is a powerful
being
!’
said Yggur. ‘It has no need to trap us – it could have taken us at any
time.’

‘Yet it seemed to be in terrible pain.’

‘You’re right,’ he said, after a thoughtful pause. ‘I
noticed that too. But why would a being so powerful that it has roamed the
universe for half an eternity be in pain?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Tulitine, ‘I also sensed an urge to
hide; to insulate itself from our world.’

‘Perhaps it’s in pain because it’s no longer whole,’ said
Maelys, answering Yggur’s question. ‘It seemed to me that our world was painful
to it.’

‘The caduceus could be a trap,’ said Tulitine. ‘How can we
tell? No human can fathom how a being thinks, or why it does what it does. But
I think it is an offer, and we’ve got to use it.’

‘How?’ said Yggur.

‘By holding the caduceus, the way I envisaged us doing, and
seeing what happens.’

‘You saw us a long way from here. Are you thinking that it
can create portals? That’s a mighty Art, one of the greatest spells of all.’

‘For human mancers,’ said Tulitine. ‘But for an immortal
being that once roamed the eleven dimensions, making a portal from one place to
another is probably the tiniest of spells, one it does without thinking.’

‘A portal!’ said Yggur in a breathy voice. ‘Well, why not?
And then what?’

‘Chthonic fire must be found, or all humanity is in peril,
and if we can’t find it, no one can.’

‘If we do find it, and give it to Stilkeen, it might rejoin
with its severed spirits, then destroy humanity anyway,’ said Yggur. ‘I know
that much about beings – insults to their dignity, or their majesty,
never go unpunished.’

‘We’ve got nothing to lose,’ said Tulitine. ‘Let’s try it.
Where can chthonic fire be found, apart from at the Numinator’s tower?’

‘I’ve no idea – I’d never heard of it until Flydd
showed up with the wretched stuff. Interfering old fool. Why couldn’t he have
left well enough alone?’

‘It was the only way to escape from the God-Emperor,’ said
Maelys. ‘Besides, Stilkeen has been searching for its stolen fire for thousands
of years. The Numinator said so.’

‘But surely, Flydd’s use of the fire led Stilkeen here,’
said Yggur. He looked around. ‘We’ll need warmer clothing, where we’re going.’

They rifled the packs of the nearest enemy soldiers for
their travelling cloaks, dry socks, and food.

‘Take hold of the caduceus,’ said Yggur.

Maelys did not want to go anywhere near it, or the
Numinator, but she could not remain here. She grasped the shaft of the
caduceus, below Tulitine’s hand. Yggur’s hand was near the top, below the
mouths of the serpents.

The moment her fingers closed around the rough iron, the two
entwining serpents slid off onto the baked mud. The wind shrilled in Maelys’s
ears, she felt a hard blow in the belly, then they vanished from the Range of
Ruin and were surrounded by frigid, whirling whiteness – not dust but
snow.

 
SEVEN

Nish was racing along the deer track, when the ground
gave a long, rolling shudder. He stopped, alarmed, for he knew what it was
– a landslide. After all the rain, the soil was so saturated that it was
turning into mud.

His first thought was for Maelys, and he had just turned to
run back when the ground gave a much stronger shudder, a huge landslide. He
heard a deafening series of crashes, and then a thunderous roar. The landslide
had gone into the dam, and the dam had broken.

There was no time to go back, or forwards; on this path he
was close to the river and if he could not find a higher path he was going to
die. Nish closed his eyes, turned his head from side to side and forced himself
to trust his clear-sight. It wasn’t easy to let go, but he had to. There,
directly up the slope through the forest.

He hacked the vines and giant fungi aside, pushed through,
and within thirty paces came onto another path he would never have known was
there, heading uphill. Nish sprang onto it, turned left and ran up as though
the flood was at his heels.

It was, for he could hear the water coming with a vast
grinding roar as it tore forest trees out of the earth and razed everything to
the ground. He was running up a steep slope now and had a terrific pain in his
side, but he had to warn his militia. They wouldn’t realise what was happening
until the flood tore through the lower clearing, by which time it would be too
late.

But what about Maelys? He stopped, gasping and trying to
think. The landslide must have been upstream of the upper clearing or it would
not have gone into the dam. Therefore Maelys only had to run up the clearing to
be safe. She was quick-witted; she’d be all right. He prayed she would be, for
there was nothing he could do for her.

He ran on, and soon burst out of the forest opposite the
rock outcrop, which was a few hundred paces away. His militia had taken cover
behind it, lances out. Klarm’s troops were closer to him, halfway up the slope
and advancing steadily. They could afford to take their time, for Nish’s
archers had shot their last arrows and their bows were useless.

The enemy were shouting taunts and displaying the heads of
fallen militiamen and women on the points of their spears. Nish was close
enough to recognise some of them. Was that Gi’s head impaled on the spear of
that brute of a sergeant? Not sweet, gentle Gi, whose clever strategy with the
archers had saved them in the upper clearing! But it was and, remembering all
the good times they had shared together, Nish clenched his fists in impotent
fury. Oh, for a bow and a quiverful of arrows.

The sergeant saw him and bellowed. ‘It’s Cryl-Nish. After
him!’

Nish took off, roaring, ‘Run! Run for your very lives, that
way!’ and pointing towards the vine-tangled upper wall of the forest.

The militia were all staring at him, but no one moved. The
roaring of the flood echoed down the valley, far louder here. The enemy troops
whirled and stared at the river, which was rising rapidly, but they could not
comprehend the magnitude of the horror bearing down on them.

‘Run!’ Nish bellowed, forcing more speed from his exhausted
legs. He was above the level of the outcrop now, and some hundred paces away.

A wall of water, trees and rocks exploded down the river,
smashing the trees in its path to splinters. Passing well below the lowest of
the enemy, who must have thought they were safe, it slammed into the narrow
slot of the gorge, damming it in an instant. The water behind it piled up and
up, then flooded out in the only direction it could go, sideways into the
clearing, and up the slope.

The first wave took the lower third of Klarm’s troops.

‘Go, you fools!’ Nish screamed.

The militia could not have heard him over the cataclysmic
sound of the flood, but they could see the danger now. They ran for the forest
above.

The second, much higher wave took the rest of the enemy,
including the sergeant with his gruesome trophy, while the third wave raced up
the slope almost to the base of the outcrop. But a far larger surge was rolling
down the river to crash against the dammed gorge, and anyone who did not make
the forest before it bored its way up the clearing was doomed.

Nish ran as he had never run before. To his left, the militia
were scrambling into the trees as fast as they could force their way through
the tangled vegetation. Maybe half were inside now, with half to go. They
weren’t moving fast enough but there was no more he could do for them. He put
his head down and drove himself upwards.

The great surge was hissing up the steep slope, carrying a
few floating enemy with it. It overtopped the outcrop and kept going, only
twenty paces behind him now, and slowing, but so was he, for his calf muscles
felt as if they were tearing apart. He kept going and, as the water struck the
backs of his knees, dived head-first through a gap in the vegetation, caught
hold of a sturdy vine and wrapped it around himself.

The surge came through the trees in a series of streams, its
force almost spent, then rose over his head in seconds and began to flow the
other way; if he’d not held onto the vine he would have been carried with it.
He swung in the water, clinging desperately as it drained away, carrying
branches, leaves and all too many militiamen with it, then it was over.