The Destiny of the Dead (The Song of the Tears Book 3) (26 page)

So much had happened since that she had not even begun to
grieve for him. Wiping her eyes, with an effort she put him out of her mind; she
could not afford to be distracted now.

Cracks ran across the ceiling here and there, and along them
delicate icicles had formed. How long could the roof hold? After studying the
icicles, which were unbroken, she decided that it was probably safe to go further.

Halfway to the centre she stopped, squinting into the gloom.
Could that faint, writhing worm of light up ahead be chthonic fire? Her heart
thumped.

In the middle of the open space, a ragged column of ice the
width of a small cottage extended from floor to ceiling, like the well-gnawed
core of an enormous apple. A ragged line of fire lit one of the edges facing
her. There wasn’t much fire, though, and if she tried to collect it, it might
go out. She needed as much as she could find.

Maelys continued around to the left and, on the far side of
the ice core, she discovered a brightly glowing patch of white fire near the
floor.

She squatted down to study it. The fire made a faint
crackling sound as it consumed the ice, and it was strong and vigorous. As she
was psyching herself up to collect it with the perilous dimensionless box,
something scraped behind her and Maelys whirled.

A tall and unusually gaunt man stood in the shadows, dressed
in a black loincloth and wearing a crown of iron barbs, and his glittering,
lidless eyes were fixed on her.

‘I knew one of you would return for the fire,’ said the
Whelm sorcerer, Zofloc.

 
EIGHTEEN

‘The air-sled isn’t yours,’ Flydd said imperturbably to
the dwarf. ‘You’re only minding it for the master whose filthy boots you lick
clean every night.’

Klarm scowled. ‘Drop the staff, Flydd, or feel all the power
of Reaper.’ His hand hovered above its roiling surface.

Nish looked from Klarm to Flydd, back to Klarm, and gnawed
his lip. Even at the height of Flydd’s powers, a long time ago now, he had
never been a match for the tears.

‘
All
the power?’
scoffed Flydd. ‘Come now, Klarm. Jal-Nish would have given you as little of
Reaper’s power as he could get away with. He was always terrified of rivals.’

‘Do you seriously believe that he would leave his empire
unprotected?’

‘Not if he’d known Stilkeen was coming. But he didn’t.’

‘He has long known of a threat from the void – he just
didn’t know what it was.’

‘My point stands,’ said Flydd, though with less confidence
than before. ‘Besides, we both know that it took Jal-Nish years to master the
tears – you can’t have done it in a few days.’

‘I’ve served him loyally for many years,’ said Klarm. ‘I’ve
had plenty of time to learn all about them. Are you prepared to risk it?’

Flydd did not reply; he must have been having second
thoughts. Nish would have done the same, for he still bore the scars from the
touch of Reaper, and still felt the pain. But Flydd had to go on; he was their
only hope now and he had to call Klarm’s bluff – if it
was
a bluff. How much of the tears’
power
had
Jal-Nish allowed the dwarf
to use?

‘Xervish?’ Nish said. ‘When Father first tempted me, on the
day my ten-year sentence was up, he boasted about his mastery of the tears.
Then he said,
I’ve made sure no one can
use them but me
.’

‘Did he now? How very interesting, Klarm.’

‘He was lying. He taught me more than enough,’ said Klarm.
‘Drop the staff.’

‘I don’t think I will.’ Flydd rotated the serpent staff
until its forked tongue pointed at the dwarf. ‘I suspect I’m going to call your
bluff.’

‘You can’t possibly know how to use that thing,’ said Klarm
ringingly, though now
his
confidence
sounded forced.

‘Care to risk it?’

Klarm’s hand twitched as though he was going to attack, and
Nish tensed.

But he withdrew his hand, which was still bandaged from
where it had been burned days ago, and said, ‘I don’t care to reveal my powers
at this stage – you never know
what
might be watching.’ Turning, Klarm said in an amplified voice, ‘Take Nish and
do not harm him. Cut the others down.’

‘I wouldn’t, if I were you,’ said Flydd, grinning broadly.
‘You like to believe that you think of everything, General Klarm, but you’ve
seriously underestimated me.’

‘What are you talking about?’ said Klarm, gesturing to his
troops to stop.

‘You assumed, as did certain others,’ Flydd was looking
sideways at Nish now, and the grin had faded, ‘that I was only out for what I
could get. That I had abandoned my friends and fled on the air-sled to save my
miserable skin.’

Nish swallowed, but said nothing. Words meant little and
Flydd was exceptionally good with them. Deeds were what counted now.

‘I admit it,’ said Klarm. ‘You’re a strange man, Xervish,
and you’ve grown far stranger since you took renewal. I watched you with
Gatherer after you stole the air-sled, and you fled straight as an arrow for
Gendrigore until I lost you behind the mountains.

‘What brought you back – a crisis of conscience? No
– I don’t believe you have one. You came back for the tears. I’ve seen
the way you’ve looked at them ever since Jal-Nish brought them to the Range of
Ruin. You
burn
for them; you’ve got
to have them, whatever the cost.’

Flydd gave a scornful laugh. ‘I put on that expression every
time you looked in my direction, to gull you. And it worked.’

Klarm did not look convinced, and neither was Nish, for he
remembered Flydd’s lustful stare from the battle in the clearing. He had seen
it in his eyes whenever the tears had been mentioned, even when Klarm had been
out of sight. Where
had
Flydd been
all this time, and what had he done? And, most importantly,
why
had he come back? It had to be for
the tears. How could he so betray them?

‘But Xervish,’ said Klarm, ‘you forget that we were
scrutators together in the olden days, and that I once interrogated you. We had
special ways of sorting truth from deceit and if any scrutator was more skilled
at it than you, it was I. I
know
you’re hiding something.’

‘Indeed I am,’ said Flydd blandly, ‘and if you care to climb
a few spans up the mountainside you’ll discover what it is.’

‘I’m not going to fall for that one,’ said Klarm.

‘Then send one of your men – the least and most
useless of them.’

Klarm stared at Flydd, who met his eyes evenly, shrugged and
gestured to the man nearest to him. ‘Climb up the mountainside, trooper, and
tell me what you see.’

The soldier began to scramble up the steep slope. It was
hard going, and it took several minutes to reach a height of ten spans.
Everyone watched him in silence.

What was Flydd getting at? Nish wondered. If it was a trick,
it would soon be uncovered.

The soldier turned, found a sound footing, looked down over
the defences at the western gate, then started. ‘Soldiers, surr! An enemy
army.’

Nish’s feet almost lifted off the ground in relief. Of
course Flydd hadn’t betrayed them.

‘What?’ cried Klarm, scrambling up to see for himself.
‘Whose army; how many? And how close?’

‘They’re not in uniform,’ said the soldier. ‘They’re dressed
like farmers, though they’re well armed and moving fast. They’ll be coming over
the western gate in a minute or two.’

Klarm reached the soldier and followed his gaze. ‘Farmers!’
he cried, staring at Flydd. ‘Where the blazes did they come from?’

Flydd laughed. ‘I got the idea from something Nish said, not
long after we arrived in the clearing from the Numinator’s tower. You know
Boobelar, of course, the drunken captain of the so-called militia from Rigore
province.’

‘I’ve spoken with him,’ said Klarm, his lips thinning. ‘He
would betray his own grandmother.’

‘He put a knife to his nephew’s throat.’ Flydd’s smile
faded. ‘Weeks ago, Boobelar told Nish that the militia from Gendri province
weren’t coming, but I know the reputation of the stolid folk from Gendri
– the flatlanders, as everyone calls them, somewhat ironically, since
there is no flat land in Gendrigore. They don’t make promises they can’t keep,
and therefore Boobelar had to be lying.’

‘The Gendri militia never turned up at the rendezvous in
Wily’s Clearing,’ said Nish.

‘And you didn’t wonder why, knowing the honest folk of
Gendrigore as you did?’ said Flydd. ‘No, you were already pressed for time and
could not wait. But the answer seemed obvious to me. The militia hadn’t come
because Boobelar had given them false directions – he wanted the
battlefield plunder for himself – and they were still lost in the
mountains when you left Wily’s Clearing for the Range of Ruin.’

‘So you went looking for them.’

‘And found them, not far away,’ said Flydd, barely able to
contain his glee. ‘I set them on the right path and told them to come on at all
speed, for their countrymen were in peril and desperately needed aid. And here
they are, five hundred and sixty-two men and women of Gendri, all fit and
strong, well-supplied with the rations that failed to reach you at Wily’s
Clearing, Nish, and thirsting to defend their land and their people. Plus
another forty-six of your own militia, from the lot you left behind with
dysentery, now recovered. Well, Klarm? I think they have the measure of your
exhausted hundred.’

A horn blasted, and the first of the Gendri militia topped
the ramp over the western gap. Big, brawny farmers they might be, but their
spears made a neat line against the sky and they were marching in step, singing
as they came.

‘Whoever leads them, they’re well-trained,’ said Nish,
signing to his troops, who raised their swords and let out a full-throated
cheer of defiance.

Klarm’s hand slipped towards Reaper.

‘I’m calling your bluff,’ said Flydd, pointing the serpent
staff at the dwarf again, ‘and your troops don’t have time to do their dirty work.
You’ve lost, Klarm. The Histories will tell of this battle as the Deliverer’s
first victory, and the empire’s greatest defeat. I might even take a shot at
writing the Great Tale myself, once I retire.’ He grinned mockingly. ‘I’ll
accept your surrender now.’

The quicksilver surface of Reaper began to churn and bubble,
and in a flash of clearsight Nish saw something hot and black and eager below
the surface. The hovering hand froze and he caught his breath. If Klarm did
know how to draw upon the dreadful power of Reaper, and dared to take Flydd on,
he could turn defeat into victory in a moment.

Flydd’s fist tightened on the serpent staff, which was
limned with a baleful green luminosity.

Klarm swallowed, went to lower his swollen, bandaged hand
onto Reaper, but at the last second snatched it away, struggling to control his
terror. How interesting, thought Nish. He’s used Gatherer many times, and
Reaper once or twice, but he’s still afraid of it.

It had burned him when he’d destroyed the red-haired archer’s
arm in the clearing, and perhaps at other times, which would explain why he had
not attacked the pass directly, using Reaper’s power to shatter the defences
and destroy the militia. But Klarm, for all his courage in other ways, was too
afraid of the uncanny tears.

‘Be damned!’ Klarm raised his voice. ‘Piper, sound the
retreat.’

A soldier raised a horn and let out several abrasive blasts.

‘Surr,’ said a deathly-white sergeant, ‘where would you have
us retreat to?’

‘Back over the pass,’ said Klarm. ‘Head down the Range of
Ruin, all the way to the barracks in Taranta, Sergeant. I thank you for your
loyal service, and I pray that you make it.’

‘Surr?’ The sergeant’s voice quavered. ‘Are you not coming
with us?’

‘I must take a path that no mortal man may follow,’ said
Klarm. ‘At least, no one who does not hold the Profane Tears. Even with them, I
may not survive it, but I have to try. I must find a way to fight Stilkeen.
Farewell.’

The sergeant saluted and turned away, and his one hundred
tattered and broken men followed him up and over the crest of Blisterbone, out
of sight.

‘They’ll never get there,’ said Flydd. ‘The
really wet
season will hit any day now.’

‘I’m afraid you’re right,’ said Klarm regretfully, ‘but I
could not take them on the path I’m forced to follow.’

‘Into the shadow realm?’ said Flydd.

‘Yes. Aren’t you going to stop me?’

‘How could I? You’ve got the tears – why won’t you use
them?’

Again Klarm’s hand moved towards Reaper; again drew back.
‘The cursed tears,’ he said heavily, like one old friend confiding in another.
‘I only took them out of duty, though I never thought the burden of carrying
them would grow so heavy.’

‘It would not be as heavy if the burden was shared,’ said
Flydd slyly.

‘With you?’

‘Why not? You know what a monster Jal-Nish is, and he’s
gone, probably never to return, so why do you still serve him? Why continue to
do his evil work?’

‘He is a monster,’ said Klarm. ‘I see it now he’s gone
–’

‘Because the deceptions he worked upon you with Gatherer
have faded,’ Flydd suggested. ‘I never thought you, of all people, would be so
easily taken in.’

Klarm ignored that. ‘But there is also good in Jal-Nish. He
loves Santhenar, and he saw long ago that it was under threat.’

He tried to tell me many times, Nish remembered, but I refused
to listen. I thought he was trying to manipulate me again.
You have no idea of the vicious creatures that lurk in the eternal void
between the worlds, desperate to get out
, Jal-Nish had said at the
beginning,
but I do
.
I’ve seen them with the tears, and every one
of them hungers for the prize: the jewel of worlds that is Santhenar
. And
he had been right.