The Destiny of the Dead (The Song of the Tears Book 3) (24 page)

‘How come you didn’t use flappeters against us? That’s what
I would have done.’

‘Almost all of them were wiped out when the sky-palace came
down on Mistmurk Mountain; and the bladder-bats too. Plus the pens of other
flesh-formed creatures Jal-Nish had aboard, just in case …’

Klarm’s handsome face twisted in disgust. Evidently he did
not approve of such creatures.

‘So the avalanche was your doing, Nish,’ he went on. ‘I
thought I saw your hand in it. Who else could have the clear-sight to see the
flaw in the ice up there, and the imagination to find a way to release it. Tell
me, how did you unbind the ice?’

There was no harm in telling him now. Nish lifted the
serpent staff over his head. ‘With this. Are you going to take it from me?’

Klarm’s eyes crossed and he took an involuntary step
backwards, but hastily came forwards again. ‘Why do you think I left the
caduceus behind?’

‘You were too scared? Or wouldn’t the tears like the
competition?’

Klarm smiled thinly. ‘I don’t think they would, since you
mention it. I didn’t go near it because it’s a trap I didn’t plan on falling
into. Stilkeen left it in the clearing for a reason, and not for our good.’

‘It helped me when I needed help, and has done nothing to
hinder me at other times.’

‘And what does that tell you?’

‘Nothing, so far.’

‘It means that Stilkeen wants you to tear down your father.
But if you should ever do so, unlikely as that seems, beware of its price. You
can bet your personal equipment that there will be one, and it will be
unimaginable.’

Nish knew he was right. He’d always been uncomfortable with
the caduceus; it had to be more than it seemed. ‘What are you going to do now?’
He felt sure he knew, since Klarm was a man of his word.

‘Exactly what I promised when you rejected my offer after
Stilkeen took my God-Emperor. You and Maelys will become my prisoners, and
everyone else will be put to the sword. Where is she?’

‘I haven’t seen her since the flood, three days ago.’

Klarm paled. He had not expected that. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Search the camp,’ Nish said. ‘After she freed me, I ran
ahead to get to my militia, and she was following. Clearsight told me to strike
up through the forest, and it saved me from the flood, but only just. If Maelys
was on the river path she could not have survived.’

He met Klarm’s eyes, so the dwarf could read the truth and
the grief in them, then bent his head. Nish regretted her loss more than
anything, even his failure to correctly read the enemy’s numbers. Why hadn’t he
waited one extra minute for her? In all his life he’d had no better and more
loyal friend.

Nish reeled at the thought, for it was one he’d never had
before. He had never compared anyone to his beloved Irisis, not on equal terms.
She had been friend, comrade, lover and life partner – Irisis had been
everything to him, and he to her. And yet, though Maelys had been neither his
friend nor his lover, and in the early days he had often treated her badly, she
had remained steadfast.

He analysed the heretical thought, but found it genuine.
Maelys
had
been as good and loyal a
friend to him as Irisis, which meant that he must finally be coming to terms
with her loss. He would never forget her, and a corner of him would always
grieve for her, but Irisis was gone forever and he had to live again.
Unfortunately, that realisation had come too late.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Klarm with genuine regret. ‘Maelys was a
fine woman, one of the best I’ve ever met.’ He bowed his own head for a minute,
then said, ‘Are you going to surrender?’

‘No,’ said Nish.

‘I’m sorry about that, too.’ Klarm nodded formally and
headed back to the top of the pass with that rolling dwarf’s gait, as if he had
lived his life on the deck of a ship.

Nish returned to the militia, debating whether to tell them
what Klarm had said, but decided he had to. In the last hour of their lives he
owed them absolute honesty.

He met their eyes, one by one. ‘This is the end, my friends,
and no better friends has any man had. You’ve done everything I’ve asked of you
and much, much more, and I love you every one.’

He went down the line, embracing each of them, and the
wounded and the healers too, before going back to the front. ‘We’ve done
miracle after miracle in defence of Gendrigore, and Klarm has just revealed
that these are all the men he has left.’

The militia turned left, then right, staring at the hundred
enemy, incapable of believing that they were the only survivors of such a vast
army.

‘He began with ten thousand,’ Nish went on, ‘and is now
reduced to these hundred fighting men. We set out with five hundred, sent a
third back with illness, and now have twenty-five able-bodied. Had we known
– had I known his numbers were so few – we might have beaten him.
No, I say we would have sent him scurrying home with his tail between his
stumpy little legs.
We would have beaten
him
.’

The militia cheered, laughed, cried and embraced one
another.

‘But it was not to be, and now it’s over.’ He bowed and they
cheered again, then he turned and saw Klarm giving the signal to his troops
above and below. They drew their swords and advanced, slowly and steadily, as
if they were expecting one final trick – part of the mountain to fall
down on them, perhaps, or a pit to open up beneath their boots.

But Nish had nothing left. He swallowed. They would take him
first, and there was nothing he could do about it … unless the serpent staff
could save him. He raised it in his right hand but it felt cold now, heavy and
inert, and he could sense nothing at its core. Why had it helped him before,
only to abandon him now? Or had it not been helping him at all,
only Stilkeen
?

The enemy were less than fifty paces away, and advancing
with wary, remorseless tread, when Nish made out a faint, familiar hissing
whistle. His heart jumped, for it had to be the air-sled. But Klarm showed no
reaction; he did not even look around, and the faint hope died. One of Klarm’s
subordinates must be flying the craft.

The air-sled came shrieking up the slope towards the western
gate of Blisterbone, lifted and passed high over their heads, then shot towards
the cloud-wreathed tip of the white-thorn peak. After banking at the last
second, it came shooting down in a series of exuberant spirals that it had
certainly never performed when Klarm or Jal-Nish had flown it, and Nish’s skin
rose in goose pimples, for he
knew
it
wasn’t any of Klarm’s men at the controls.

He’d only ever met one pilot who flew with such extravagant,
exuberant daring. Chissmoul had to be at the helm. The air-sled rocketed over
Klarm’s head, buffeting his hair, skidded sideways though the air, slowly
rotating horizontally on its axis as it did, then settled like a feather in
front of Nish and his militia.

‘How does she do it?’ Nish said, laughing for sheer joy. The
craft was far more battered and bent than before, and covered in dried, flaking
mud, and it looked as though it had crashed several times since he’d last seen
it.

Chissmoul, still wearing the bloodstained bandage around her
head, sprang off, her eyes searching the militia. Then, spotting Flangers, she
ran and hurled herself into his arms so forcibly that he went over backwards
and the troops behind him had to hold him up.

The militia laughed and cheered and wept to a man. It was a
second wonderful moment in the grimmest of days. Nish turned back to Flydd, who
had remained aboard.

‘Where the bloody hell have you been?’ he said, though
inside he was exultant. Of course Flydd hadn’t betrayed them, and with the
air-sled, and his mancery, they might get out of this yet. ‘You were supposed
to be back yesterday.’

‘I had to take a little detour and was delayed longer than I
expected,’ Flydd said blandly. ‘Pile on. We don’t have much time.’

‘Lieutenant?’ Nish called to Flangers. ‘Bring your troops to
the air-sled without delay.’

‘Don’t move!’ rapped Klarm in an amplified voice. ‘I’ve got
your wounded, and the healers.’ He gestured to the left, and half a dozen of
his troops rose from behind the healer’s tent, where they had disarmed Nish’s
three guards. ‘Surrender or they die.’

Flydd glanced at Nish and some message flashed in his eyes.
Was he telling him to abandon the prisoners and run while they had the chance?
Nish gave a tiny, imperceptible shake of the head. He wasn’t leaving anyone
behind.

Flydd sighed. ‘I didn’t think you would. Too bad, though.’
He glanced up at Klarm, then down the slope towards the troops moving up from
the western gate.

Klarm came towards them and Nish made out the faintest
humming – the song of the tears. The dwarf had them around his neck, just
as Jal-Nish had worn them. Was he planning to use them on the militia, or would
he leave that pleasure to his exhausted but blood-lusting troops?

‘Lay down the serpent staff, Xervish,’ said Klarm. ‘And step
right off my air-sled.’

PART TWO

THE QUEST FOR FIRE

SEVENTEEN

The whirling blast of snow settled and Maelys could see
again. The portal had taken her, Yggur and Tulitine from the Range of Ruin to
the low, windswept shore of a treeless land whose further reaches were lost in
the distance. Granite boulders littered the shore; wiry shrubs and spindly
clumps of grass struggled for life between them. Though the ice that had once
covered the bleak landscape was gone, she knew where she was.

Ahead lay a vast, sullen sea, grey as slate and covered in
ice, except near the shore where the slanting rays of a red sun, hanging above
the horizon, reflected off still water.

‘When we came here last time, we were trying to find the
antithesis to the tears,’ said Maelys.

‘What do you mean,
antithesis
?’
said Tulitine, shivering violently despite her purloined army cloak.

‘The one single object or power or force that can break the
power of the Profane Tears and bring down the God-Emperor.’

‘How do you know there is one?’

‘I learned about it at the Pit of Possibilities. It’s one of
the reasons why Flydd agreed to take renewal. He thought the Numinator would
know about the antithesis, but she said that she did not. I don’t suppose you
do?’

‘No,’ said Tulitine. ‘This must be –’

‘The Island of Noom,’ said Yggur, taking off his own cloak
and wrapping it around her as well. ‘But the ice is gone and even the Kara
Agel, the Frozen Sea, is thawing. The distilled chthonic fire that the Numinator
blasted out in all directions as we fled her tower is eating the ice away.’

‘And even now must be spreading across the steppes,’ said
Tulitine softly. ‘What if it never stops?’

Yggur shrugged. ‘The meltwater may freeze again; Noom is a
cold, miserable place. But if it does not, and the icecaps and glaciers melt,
the ocean must rise and flood the land. Chthonic fire caused the volcanic death
of the world of Aachan, it’s said. Will rising seas be the ruin of ours?’

Maelys shivered and stamped her feet, for she had discarded
her furs when she ended up on the Range of Ruin, and under the cloak her
clothes were still damp. ‘We came here for chthonic fire. Let’s get on with it
before we freeze to death.’ She peered around. ‘I don’t see the tower.’

‘It was blown to pieces as we fled,’ said Yggur.

‘Everything looks different with the ice gone. How are we
going to find the place?’

‘The ancient stone arch should still be standing. If we head
up to the top of that ridge we might see it.’

Only days ago, Noom had been covered in snow and ice, but
there was water everywhere now, trickling around each boulder in a braided
network of icy rills. They trekked up the slope, and soon Maelys’s feet were so
cold that she could barely feel her toes.

‘I don’t suppose you could do something about warm clothes
or dry boots?’ she said.

‘How, exactly?’ said Yggur, scowling.

‘With your Art of mancery.’

‘You have an exaggerated notion of what can be done with the
Art.’

‘Maybe that’s because no one will tell me about my own
gift!’ she snapped.

‘I beg your pardon,’ he said, looking down his nose at her.

‘Sorry,’ she said hastily, shocked that she had spoken so
rudely to such a great and powerful man, for Maelys had been brought up to be
polite and demure, and to show respect for her betters. ‘But Flydd –’

‘Just because Flydd conjured furs out of nothing with the
mimemule, substantially aided by whatever talent Yalkara imprinted in him
during renewal, it doesn’t mean I can do the same. Besides …’ Yggur looked
away, a muscle in his cheek twitching.

‘What is it?’ said Tulitine, whose face was pinched and the
tip of her nose red. Despite two cloaks, she was still shivering fitfully.
‘Yggur, are you in pain?’

‘Nothing compared to yours,’ he said, putting an arm around
her and drawing her to him. ‘I’m afraid …’

‘What is it? What’s wrong?’

‘I’m afraid that my Art is failing,’ he said quietly, ‘and
it’s everything to me.’

Maelys felt for him, for Yggur was as old as the ages, and
to lose such a gift, after wielding it all that time, must be like going blind.
Suddenly ashamed of her ill-temper, she said, ‘I’m really sorry.’

‘Why is your Art failing?’ said Tulitine. ‘Can it be the
caduceus?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Yggur. He looked away, his brow
furrowed. ‘The Numinator drained all my power for seven years, and then Reaper
blocked me from using my Art, save right next to the caduceus. Perhaps I’ve
lost more than my body could bear.’

‘But you made the portal,’ said Maelys.

‘No, the
caduceus
made the portal. I only visualised where I wanted it to go.’ He strode off, his
long legs covering twice the distance of her steps.