The Destiny of the Dead (The Song of the Tears Book 3) (34 page)

Lightning flashed; the image dissolved in jags and the voice
was lost in an irritating crackling buzz.

‘– without fire and spirit, I am diminished and in
pain … and when I hurt, I
hunger
to
make worlds pay –’

Another flash, and more crackling.

‘… who brings Stilkeen the
true, uncorrupted
chthonic fire will be rewarded beyond their
dreams … keeps true fire from Stilkeen will suffer … agonies … endlessly
prolonged. Bring the fire to Morrelune within fifteen days, or …’ Another long
interruption. ‘… from the void … engulf … your civilisation.’

The blue sphere vanished, and Stilkeen with it.

‘
True, uncorrupted
chthonic fire
,’ said Yggur. ‘What can that mean?’

‘I suppose it means that the fire we’ve found is no good,’
said Tulitine. ‘It must have been corrupted, as you thought.’

‘How could Stilkeen know it’s no good?’ said Maelys, her
heart sinking even further. Had all they’d done since leaving the Range of Ruin
been for nothing?

‘If it
is
linked
to the caduceus, and I’m sure it is, Stilkeen must be able to tell that our
chthonic fire isn’t pure. I think it’s getting impatient.’

‘Then why doesn’t it get the wretched stuff for itself?’

‘Presumably it can’t.’

‘Fifteen days!’ said Maelys. ‘And we haven’t got the
faintest idea where to look for
pure
fire – or how it gets corrupted.’

‘It explains why the caduceus has been so cooperative,’ said
Tulitine. ‘Stilkeen definitely left it there to help us.’

‘As long as we use it for the right purpose,’ said Yggur
drily. ‘I doubt it would bless us if we went hunting treasure.’

‘Do you think the message only came to us?’ said Maelys.

‘How would that profit Stilkeen?’ he said. ‘I’m sure many
people saw it.’

‘What do you think
rewarded
beyond their dreams
means?’

‘We’re dealing with a subtle being here,’ said Tulitine,
‘and it could be offering a demon’s bargain.
Rewarded beyond your dreams
might be a threat.’

‘It might, but the greedy will only see treasure, and by
tomorrow every fortune hunter on Santhenar will be after the true fire. We can
only pray that none of them find it.’

‘It reinforces the urgency of our quest,’ said Yggur. He looked
at Maelys. ‘And since we don’t know where else chthonic fire might be found,
we’ll have to go to the Nightland.’

They prepared to leave at first light. The time of day
never varied in the Nightland but dawn seemed the best time to be going.

The caduceus grew hot and heavy when Yggur announced the
destination, and trembled as if its interior was in churning motion, though for
a good few minutes they remained in the rainforest. The caduceus seemed to be
struggling to pierce the barrier that had cut the Nightland off from the world
and the void for so long.

Finally the barrier parted like a pair of curtains, they
were drawn through and Maelys found herself on that flat and featureless black
plane again.

Tulitine was rubbing her hands together. The Nightland felt
colder than before – so cold that the chill went straight up through the
soles of Maelys’s boots. Cold as my dead lover, she thought, and her eyes
stung.

‘Which way?’ said Yggur, peering into the darkness.

‘I don’t know,’ said Maelys, almost choking. She wished they
were a thousand leagues away. She could not bear to think about Emberr lying
here, dead, and she did not want to talk to anyone about him, nor for anyone
else to see his body – in whatever state it was in by now.

‘But … surely – you’ve been here twice …’

‘And I have no idea where Emberr’s cottage is.’

‘How did you find it in the beginning?’ said Tulitine
gently.

‘When I came here with Flydd and Colm … Emberr scented me
while I slept. He called me, mind to mind, and gave me directions.’ Maelys
smiled at the memories.

‘And the second time?’

‘After I followed the Numinator through the fire portal, I
called Emberr with my mind. I didn’t expect it to work but he must have been
waiting for me, and he told me where to go. His cottage was under an
enchantment and no one could find it unless he willed it; he said it was made
that way.’

‘By Yalkara, to protect him, I suppose,’ said Tulitine.

‘But the Numinator found the cottage,’ said Yggur.

‘That was my fault,’ said Maelys. ‘After Emberr and I … lay
together, I got up. He was still sleeping …’ She rubbed eyes that were already
red. ‘At least, I thought he was asleep. I went to the front door and looked
out, but the Numinator was nearby, searching, and as soon as I opened the door
it broke the enchantment. She saw me and I couldn’t keep her out.’

‘Why do you blame yourself for that?’ said Tulitine. ‘She
didn’t harm Emberr.’

‘At home, every time something went wrong it was my fault.
What if we can’t find the cottage?’

‘The caduceus has a powerful link to white fire,’ said
Yggur. ‘If there’s any here, we’ll find it.’

He made a fist, held it upright, laid the caduceus across it
and spun it gently, three times, but each time it came to rest pointing in a
different direction. ‘Not a very good start,’ he said ruefully.

‘Why did Stilkeen want to revenge itself on Emberr, anyhow?’
said Maelys. ‘Yalkara committed the crime.’

‘Perhaps it thought that destroying her child, the sole
surviving Charon male, was a better revenge,’ said Yggur. ‘Let’s get on.’

They found no sign of Emberr’s cottage on the first day
and had no idea where to look next; since this part of the Nightland was so
featureless, there was no way of telling where they were going or where they
had been. They camped for the night and made a frugal meal on the supplies they
had brought with them. Afterwards the Nightland provided them with black
blankets, in the same way that it had provided food and bedding on Maelys’s
first visit, and she lay down to rest.

Yggur helped Tulitine off with her boots, tucked her in,
folded his own blankets and put them under her head for a pillow.

‘What about you?’ said Tulitine, sighing as the weight came
off her troubled bones.

‘I wasn’t planning on sleeping yet.’

She lay there, eyes on him as he moved back and forth. With
the point of the caduceus he prised out a length of the black floor, a firm,
yet plastic substance unlike any material Maelys had ever seen, and fashioned
it into a simple stand which curved over at the top. Drawing a black thread
down from the end, he tied it around the centre of the caduceus and moved it
back and forth until it was suspended horizontally.

‘Is it a direction finder?’ said Maelys.

‘I hope so.’

He spun the caduceus gently, and it came to rest pointing
past Tulitine. Maelys sat up and peered that way, but Yggur spun the caduceus
again and it pointed in a different direction, and different again the third
time.

‘I hate this place,’ said Yggur, adjusting the caduceus and
thread, ‘which is ironic since I had a hand in creating it, well over a
thousand years ago. But it’s greatly changed, and in ways that I cannot
fathom.’

‘All things change,’ said Tulitine.

‘And things fashioned with the Art change in unpredictable
ways. The more they’re used, or the more powerful the mancers who use them, the
more radically they can be transformed. It’s one of the first principles of
mancery, and why the same spell never works exactly the same way twice.’

‘My taphloid seems to change all the time,’ said Maelys.
‘Whenever I think I understand it, it does something to surprise me.’

‘Ah yes, your taphloid,’ said Yggur, staring so fixedly at
the chain running down between her breasts that Maelys felt uncomfortable and
hugged herself protectively. ‘Where did it come from – and why did it
feel so familiar in my hand, when I’ve no memory of having seen it before?’

‘There’s a long gap in your life,’ said Tulitine. ‘When you
…’

‘Wandered witless?’ said Yggur. ‘I don’t mind you saying
it.’

‘Can you teach me the Art?’ said Maelys, who had been lost
in her own thoughts. ‘Father had my talent suppressed to protect me. Though … I
know I’m really old to be starting on mancery …’

‘
Really old
?’ said
Yggur, smiling. ‘How old are you?’

She flushed. Was he laughing at her? ‘I’m nineteen.’

He idly spun the caduceus, which came to rest pointing over
her shoulder. ‘It’s true – unless one begins mancery at an early age it
can never be truly mastered, just as one who learns a new language after
childhood will always speak it with an accent. It may already be too late for
you.’

He frowned at a sudden realisation. ‘I must have learned my
own Art from the earliest age; I cannot remember a time without it.’ He spun
the caduceus again; again it pointed over Maelys’s shoulder.

‘Will you teach me, when all this is done?’

Yggur twisted the tip of the caduceus in the opposite
direction. ‘I expect I would be an indifferent teacher –’

The caduceus shuddered, tore out of his grasp and pointed
over Maelys’s shoulder again.

‘That’s definitely a sign,’ Tulitine said. ‘I suppose I’ve
got to get out of bed.’

‘I’m afraid so,’ said Yggur.

Maelys stared in the direction the caduceus was pointing,
and swallowed. It had to be pointing to the cottage; to Emberr’s abandoned
body.

They walked through the black, featureless wastes of the
Nightland for the best part of an hour, at which time she made out a small
square shape in the distance.

‘There it is!’ said Maelys, and took off.

‘Wait,’ said Yggur.

Tulitine murmured, ‘Maelys, it may not –’

The happiest hours of Maelys’s life had been spent there,
followed by the darkest, and whatever lay ahead of her she could not hold back
now. She ran until she had a stitch in her side and each breath was tearing at
her throat.

The cottage had been a pretty little wooden place with warm
light streaming through its windows to illuminate gardens full of flowers at
the front, a paved path and a rustic timber fence. At the rear there had been a
vegetable patch, fruit trees and a small forest fading into the darkness.

But no more. ‘What’s happened?’ she panted, coming to a stop
outside the crumbling gate. ‘I was here only a couple of weeks ago. How can it
be so changed?’

‘Time passes differently in the Nightland,’ said Yggur, who
had run after her. ‘Sometimes fast, at other times with interminable slowness.
It was designed that way so as to punish its solitary prisoner.’

‘Emberr’s cottage had been so warm and lovely. Now look at
it.’

The garden was dead, the fruit trees leafless, while the
light leaking from the broken, sagging windows was a dingy grey. There was a
hole in the roof, and the garden and path were littered with fallen, rotting
shingles.

There came a low, distant thud. The floor of the Nightland
quivered gently, and in the woods behind the cottage something fell with a
cracking sound, like a long-dead branch breaking. It’s all dead, she thought.
Everything’s falling to pieces.

She pushed on the gate but it did not move, for the hinges
had rusted; the timber broke under the pressure of her fingers. It was powdery
and crumbling, eaten away by dry rot.

Maelys picked her way along the path, afraid of what she
would find inside, but even if Emberr was rotting flesh or mouldering bones she
could not stop now. She swallowed, tightened her jaw and continued.

‘Wait,’ called Tulitine, who was still some distance away,
and her voice sounded more strained than before. Every step, even on the smooth
floor of the Nightland, troubled her. ‘We’ll come with you.’

‘I’d prefer to see Emberr alone,’ said Maelys over her
shoulder. ‘No matter what state he’s in. I caused his death; the least I can do
is take care of the – the body.’

‘As you told the story,’ said Yggur, ‘Emberr saw traces of
white fire on your skin and knew what it was likely to do to him, but lay with
you anyway. He was born in the Nightland; he had spent more than two hundred
years here and could never leave; maybe he’d had enough.’

Maelys could not listen; Emberr was dead and that was all
that mattered. What use was reasoned argument, or excuses? Going up the steps,
feeling the rotten wood giving underfoot, she pushed on the sagging door.

It swung open, scraping across the floor, and she looked
down the hall. The wall and floor timbers were decayed now and everything was
covered in fine black dust. She did not recall seeing dust in the Nightland previously.

She crept down the hall into the small room with the rugs on
the floor. The rugs by the fireplace where … There was a lump in her throat;
she swallowed but still found it hard to breathe. As she went in, she saw the
cushion Emberr had given her to sit on, and beside it the platter of food, now
just shrivelled and unidentifiable shreds.

And there was the kilt he had taken off before they lay
together on the rug. It was still indented with the shape of his long, muscular
body. But the body was gone.

 
TWENTY-FOUR

Nish scrambled out from under the deck of the air-sled.
‘What’s the matter? What have I done?’

The air-sled was lurching and wobbling across the sky, for
Chissmoul was flying it with her eyes closed and her face was screwed up.

‘It burns,’ she gasped. ‘It feels like the backs of my eyes
are burning. Aah! Aaahh! Flangers, put your hands over my eyes. Press hard,
then tell me which way to go.’

He did so and she zigged and zagged, banked and climbed,
completely blind. His head was swinging this way and that, keeping watch on the
javelards coming from the front and sides, and calling out instructions to go
fast or slow, climb or descend, turn east or south or west or north.