The Destiny of the Dead (The Song of the Tears Book 3) (55 page)

They were gliding down when Persia said quietly, ‘M’lainte,
Pensittor’s ships are faster than Yulla’s.’

‘And the scriers back there saw which way we headed,’ said
M’lainte. ‘Therefore, Vomix will send his fastest ships after this one.’

‘We’d better fly directly to Morrelune,’ said Nish.

‘I have to return the air-sled to Yulla. It may be all she
has left,’ said M’lainte.

‘She’ll be in Vomix’s cells by now.’ Nish did not want to
give up the air-sled; it was the only advantage he had. ‘If she’s –’

‘Alive at all,’ Persia said bleakly.

‘Yulla is a wily old dog,’ said M’lainte, ‘if I can use so
vulgar an expression. All her life she’s been alert for treachery –’

‘Not alert enough,’ snapped Nish, for the pain was getting
worse. ‘She didn’t see this betrayal coming.’

‘Maybe she did, but had no way of getting word to us.
Anyway, I said I’d bring the air-sled back and that’s what I’m going to do.’

‘You’ll lose it, and your life,’ Nish said bitterly.

‘I too am a wily old hound,’ smiled M’lainte, ‘and I don’t
think my time is up yet.’ She looked over the side. ‘It’s definitely Yulla’s
ship. Take us down.’

 
THIRTY-SEVEN

On the ice platform outside the cubular door of the
city of Stassor, the four of them took hold of the caduceus. Maelys’s pale hand
was lowest, since she was much smaller than the others; next was Malien’s
weatherworn and long-fingered hand, then a gap to Tulitine’s slender fingers,
her flesh pink and blue, sluggish blood clearly visible through transparent
skin, and another gap to Yggur’s big dark hand.

‘I’m not sure how to get to Aachan,’ he said shakily, for he
was far from fully recovered. ‘Making a portal to a place you know is hard
enough, but travelling between worlds is far more perilous than jumping within
them, and I’ve never been to Aachan.’

‘You have seen it clearly, though,’ said Malien.

‘I have?’ said Yggur, frowning.

‘It was at the end of the Time of the Mirror, when Maigraith
took Rulke’s body and his construct to Aachan, where Yalkara and the other
surviving Charon had gathered. They were about to go back to the void –’

‘I wish they had,’ gritted Maelys, ‘and taken Maigraith and
Yalkara with them.’

‘As I was saying,’ said Malien pointedly, ‘the Charon were
preparing to return to the void when my people attacked. They were about to
kill Maigraith when Yggur did something that had never been done before, and
saved her life.’

‘I loved her, once,’ said Yggur, ‘long before she became the
Numinator.’ His mouth twisted. ‘But she would not have me. She cast me aside.’

‘That day you did something that should have been
impossible, and no mancer has ever understood how you did it. You fired a bolt
of force across the Way between the Worlds to destroy the construct. And to do
that, you had to see Aachan clearly.’

‘You’re right,’ said Yggur in amazement. ‘I did! Though I
cannot remember
how
I did it.’

‘I’m not surprised. It nearly killed you.’

‘I remember the pain – awful, tearing pain, as if my
inner organs were being torn apart. So! I
have
felt worse than I do now, and yet I recovered. I – can – do –
this.’ He straightened his bowed back. ‘Ready, Maelys?’

‘What?’ She had lifted her hand from the caduceus. ‘Sorry.’
She took a firm grip, expecting a painful passage … if the portal worked at
all.

It went so dark that Maelys could not see their hands. She
was weightless – she no longer felt the heavy pull of gravity on her breasts,
nor the accompanying tension that was always present in her shoulder muscles.
Air whispered around her ears and she floated for some seconds, her weight
slowly coming back, though not as heavily as previously, before she settled on
something hard.

When her sight returned, the light was dim and ruddy, the
air cool and humid; it smelled powerfully of sulphur and tingled in her
nostrils. Their four hands appeared, placed as they had been before, with
Yggur’s big chest blocking her view. Looking to one side, she made out a dismal
black plain, beyond which shard-like mountains marked a jagged horizon. A small
red sun hung a third of the way up the sky, haloed by yellow bands, its meagre
light struggling to penetrate the thick air.

Yggur staggered, his fingers slipped and he clung to the
caduceus for support, pulling it backwards. Maelys and Tulitine, who were on
the opposite side, struggled to hold it; Tulitine stifled a cry of pain.

‘Yggur,’ Malien said sharply, ‘if you can’t stand up, sit
down.’

After finding his balance with an effort, he wiped cold
sweat off his brow. ‘It doesn’t hurt as much as the last portal; I think I can
manage it.’ He looked around. ‘We’re here.’

‘Aachan, beloved Aachan.’ Malien took a deep, shuddery
breath and walked away so light-footedly that she appeared to be bouncing.

‘It’s more comfortable here,’ said Tulitine. ‘My bones
hardly ache at all.’

‘I too feel a little stronger,’ said Yggur.

As Maelys’s eyes adjusted to the light, she saw that the
plain was a congealed lava flow, its surface dark, ropy and twisted. The rock
was cold beneath her feet, and puddles of water lay here and there, while
further on, yellow vapour drifted up from crevices.

A stone’s throw to her right a number of large structures,
half buried in the lava, looked like reflective metal bubbles. Some were
singles, others grouped in clusters, and several were encircled by platforms
like planetary rings.

‘Are they houses?’ Maelys wondered, for she had never seen
any buildings remotely like them.

‘They were, before the lava flowed,’ said Yggur. ‘The Aachim
are brilliant architects, builders and artists, and everything they make is
beautiful, but different, for they cannot bear to build to the same design
twice.’

She sniffed the air which, though pungent, seemed perfectly
breathable. ‘Do you think the ones who came to our world at the end of the
lyrinx war lied about Aachan being destroyed?’

He shook his head. ‘The Aachim love their world with a depth
and a passion we cannot understand, because the Charon took it from them and
held it for thousands of years. When they fled through their portal to
Santhenar, maybe thirteen years ago, this world was almost uninhabitable.’

Malien came back, breathing deeply in the chill air, and her
cheeks were moist.

‘I was born on Santhenar,’ she said as softly as a sigh, ‘as
were my parents and grandparents, yet the longing for Aachan is etched into our
very bones. Every Aachim dreams of making pilgrimage to our home world, though
I never thought I would.’

‘Why not?’ said Maelys.

‘Crossing from one world to another has rarely been
possible, and it would not be possible now, I suspect, had Stilkeen not allowed
it.’ Malien rotated in a circle, studying the sawtooth horizon, her chest
heaving and her grey-green eyes shining. ‘After Yggur destroyed the construct
two centuries ago, and the Way between the Worlds was lost, I thought we were
destined to be forever exiles. Even then,’ she mused, as if looking back at
that distant time, ‘the volcanoes were erupting out of control.’

‘Are they finished now?’

‘There’s no way of knowing. This country is high up and may
have been spared the worst, but much of Aachan’s low-lying land was flooded
hundreds of spans deep in lava. It must have been a desperate time.’

‘It’s a grim-looking world,’ said Maelys without thinking.

‘It must seem so to you, but we love it more than our
lives.’ Malien looked around wistfully. ‘I wonder if anyone could have
survived? In the catacombs life may have struggled on during the worst of the
eruptions. For a while, at least …’

‘We came for chthonic fire,’ said Tulitine gently, as if
reluctant to bring Malien back to reality, ‘and we don’t have long to find it.
Where might it have survived?’

‘Possibly in association with molten lava, if chthonic fire
caused the eruptions,’ said Malien.

‘If it is, it’ll be deuced hard to get to,’ said Yggur.

‘The caduceus might know where to look for it,’ said
Tulitine.

‘If it’s that easy,’ said Maelys, ‘why doesn’t Stilkeen find
the fire itself?’

‘It can’t,’ said Yggur. ‘When chthonic fire bound Stilkeen’s
physical and spirit aspects together it could roam the universe at will, but
once severed from those spirit aspects – the revenants now trapped in the
shadow realm – the physical worlds became excruciatingly painful for it.
You saw, in that brief appearance before Stilkeen snatched Jal-Nish, how much
it was suffering. To search our world, or this one, would be impossible.’

‘That has to be why it left the caduceus for us,’ added
Tulitine. ‘That’s why it’s manipulating us, and why Stilkeen made its
proclamation to the whole world – so someone, somewhere, might do what it
could not.’

‘What if you gave the caduceus its head?’ said Maelys.

‘Yes, that’s the answer! Create a portal, Yggur, but instead
of thinking of the destination, think about what you want to find there. Can
you make another?’

‘I should be able to. The aftersickness isn’t as bad here
– at least, so far. Put your hands on the shaft.’

They did so, and were whirled away to the top of a range of
volcanic hills whose tops were as jagged as broken glass, where the brittle
lava had shattered leaving a series of steep little peaks. The ground fell away
on all sides into sheer ravines, and in the base of one, far below, Maelys saw
a broad river of red-hot lava. On its surface, at the centre, several bright
worms of white fire writhed.

‘There it is,’ she said, thinking that it seemed a little
too easy.

‘We can’t climb down there,’ said Yggur. ‘The rock would cut
our hands and boots to pieces, and the merest slip would be fatal.’

‘Can’t you make a portal to the fire?’ said Maelys.

‘Onto molten lava?’ Yggur studied the flow, frowning and
shaking his head. ‘The white fire is right in the middle and we can’t get to
it. I’ll try again.’

This time they ended up on a dark, undulating plateau with a
great canyon snaking across it, and brooks and rills tumbling over its sheer
sides. There were patches of wiry grey scrub on the plateau, swathes of tough
blue grass and flat clumps of blue-black luminous flowers like six-petalled
daisies.

They walked to the edge of the canyon, the blue grass
springy beneath their boots, and looked over. The sun was almost on the horizon
here, the canyon lay in shadow and its bottom was dizzyingly far below.

More luminous plants sprouted from the canyon walls; some
were like toadstools, others resembled the growths on fallen logs, and they
came in an extraordinary variety of shapes and colours.

‘I don’t see any white fire,’ said Maelys, her confidence
fading.

‘Keep looking,’ said Yggur tiredly. ‘I’m sure the caduceus
didn’t bring us here for nothing.’

‘What’s that?’ said Tulitine, leaning over the rim of the
canyon. ‘It’s glowing.’

Maelys went down on her hands and knees. ‘Just sap,
trickling out of the stalk of one of those luminous toadstools. Besides, it’s yellow.’

‘Luminous plants and fungi are common here,’ said Malien.
‘In olden times, the roots of that black daisy were used by seers to follow the
paths of the future, not that it did them any good.’ She laughed mirthlessly.
‘We Aachim have never had trouble seeing into our futures – only in
deciding on any course of action.’

She crouched beside Maelys and looked down. ‘The juice of
those toadstools gives a good light for reading or fine work,’ she went on.
‘Unfortunately it only lasts a few hours.’

Maelys reached down with her knife and scraped off some
juice. ‘It might come in handy after sunset.’

‘We’d better keep looking,’ said Malien. ‘Tomorrow is the
fifteenth day. It’ll be dark here soon, but if you take us west, we’ll still be
in daylight –’

Yggur was shaking his head. ‘I can’t do any more today, or
I’ll have nothing left to get us home. Where would be the best place to camp?’

‘In the canyon, on a ledge or in a cave, if we can find one.
Predators roam the high plains at night and they’re very quick.’

‘Would a fire keep them away?’ said Maelys, scanning the
darkening plateau.

‘It would help. I’ll see if I can find some dead bushes.
Look for a camp site.’

Not far below the canyon’s rim they found a narrow ledge
running down to a broader one, and at its back the wall had a deep indentation,
which, if not quite a cave, could be defended – at least from small
predators.

The light faded, and here and there along the canyon wall
trickles of toadstool sap began to glow like necklaces of pale yellow jewels.
Malien appeared, dragging a couple of dead wire-bushes, and made a small fire.
After dinner, Yggur, who was silent and exhausted, lay in his blankets at the
back of the indentation and Tulitine joined him.

Malien sighed. ‘Aachan, Aachan.’

This world was mentioned in a number of the dark stories
Maelys had been told as a little girl, but it was an alien place to her; she
could never be at home here. She shivered and tried to think of a cheerful
tale, but her thoughts kept going back to the Tale of the Mirror, and the two
people whose story it had been.

‘Did you know them well?’ she said absently.

‘Know whom?’ said Malien.

‘Sorry. I was thinking about the Time of the Mirror, and
Karan Kin-Slayer and Llian –’

‘Don’t call them that!’ snapped Malien. ‘Yes, I knew them
both very well. And I don’t want to talk about them.’

‘Sorry,’ Maelys muttered. Yggur and Lilis had reacted in
much the same way when the two names had been mentioned. The betrayal must have
been a dreadful one, yet, the more Maelys heard about Karan, the more she
wanted to know about her.