The Destiny of the Dead (The Song of the Tears Book 3) (57 page)

It was well after midnight when he limped into the
water-side tavern, desperate for news. Nish gagged as he entered, for the place
reeked of bad food, sour ale and other unpleasant things, and had his stomach
not been emptied out long ago, he would have disgraced himself in front of
everyone. That would certainly attract unwelcome attention, he thought wryly,
noting that the drinkers were eyeing him. He looked as disreputable as any of
them; his clothes were filthy and his coat still smelt faintly of the vomit
that had permeated the whole ship.

After buying a large drink he had no intention of touching,
he sat in a corner with his hat shading his eyes until the attention of the
customers returned to more interesting matters.

Despite the hour, the tavern was packed. Everyone was
talking about the great armies racing each other up the God-Emperor’s Highway
from Fadd to Morrelune, and what they would do once they got there. Nish made a
mental note of the names of their leaders, though only the last meant anything
to him.

‘My money is on Seneschal Vomix,’ said a squat, bald sailor
with skin like a crumpled leather handbag. ‘He’s the meanest bastard in the
world.’ He glanced hastily over his shoulder as he spoke. ‘This Stilkeen beast
won’t know what hit it.’

‘He’s a right one, Vomix,’ said an equally leathery old
woman who was smoking tea leaves in a clay pipe. She tamped them down with a
tarry finger and drew an appreciative lungful.

‘Vomix can’t get there in time,’ said the bartender, picking
his nose and wiping it on the apron he was drying tankards with. ‘Hackel’s army
will be halfway to Morrelune by now.’

‘Vomix’s advance guard landed at Fadd this morning,’ said
the bald sailor, ‘and he’s already got the support of the army there. He was
Seneschal in Fadd for years, remember? He’ll be God-Emperor within the week.’

‘And make our lives a misery again,’ said the old woman.
‘But the Deliverer is coming to save us,’ she muttered, emitting clouds of blue
tea smoke. ‘He gave his word, ten years ago.’

Nish stiffened, then tried to relax. She wasn’t looking at
him, and there was no reason why anyone should associate him with the
Deliverer. He looked like a drunken bum, and stank like one, too.

‘The Deliverer can’t beat Vomix without an army,’ said the
bartender, shooting an anxious glance towards the far corner, where a thin man
sat hunched over his drink as if it was the only thing in the world to him,
though he hadn’t touched it since Nish had entered. Spy, or scrier, Nish knew,
looking away and drawing back into the shadows. Realising that his own
untouched drink was a giveaway, he took a mouthful of the sour, unpleasant
brew, swallowed, and almost brought it up again.

‘Nish had a mighty victory on the Range of Ruin,’ said the
old woman. ‘He’ll come.’

‘I heard that Vomix killed him up north,’ said the bald
sailor.

‘Gruin Plebb said Nish was strung up in the torture
chambers, begging for his life,’ said a plump, red-faced young man.

‘Gruin Plebb is a famous liar,’ said the old woman, ‘and so
deep in Vomix’s pocket he’d need a ladder to get out. I don’t believe his lies
for a second. And even if Nish
is
a
prisoner, he’ll soon get free.’

‘No one escapes from Vomix,’ said the bartender, speaking as
if by rote.

‘Nish got away from Mazurhize,’ said the old woman. ‘He’ll
come to our rescue, mark my words.’

This pronouncement was so comprehensively laughed down that
Nish suspected the opposition was organised. Vomix could not allow him to
develop a personal following; his spies and followers would ensure any such
buds were trimmed early.

No one was betting on Stilkeen to emerge the victor, he
noted. It was universally mocked as a crude but savage beast, though to his own
ears the drink-fuelled revelry had an end-of-the-world hysteria about it.

He heard no word of Flydd, which suggested that he had
failed in his quest. If he had returned, Nish felt sure Flydd would have made
himself known, so as to give hope to his allies. Unless he was really after the
tears, or had plans to steal the throne for himself …

No! Nish had been friends with Flydd for many years, and
he’d always been solid and reliable. Besides, Nish knew that one of the
God-Emperor’s most important weapons was undermining the opposition by sowing
suspicion and dissension, and he wasn’t having it. Self-doubt had crippled him
in the months following his escape from prison and it had taken all his will to
overcome it. He wasn’t going down that path again, either.

He had learned enough. He took another pull at the vile
drink, grimaced and quietly went out. Though he was desperate for sleep he had
to get his army going at once. The wisp-watcher might have been destroyed, but
the eyes of the enemy were everywhere.

An hour later he was leading his sick and unhappy troops
across the fields towards a minor path that ran into the hills. As they moved
up a small wooded slope he caught sight of Yulla’s ship, weighing anchor.

‘Good riddance,’ he muttered. ‘From now on, wherever I’ve
got to go, I’m going on my own flat feet.’

He had put Flangers in command of Yulla’s soldiers and told
him to allow them no respite, knowing that Vomix’s spies were bound to hear
about the little army by morning, and in the light of day they would soon
discover which path it had taken. It was a race to get to Morrelune first;
every moment counted now.

‘You can’t drive them any harder, Nish,’ said Flangers
that evening, when they had been going with barely a rest for sixteen hours.
‘My men are on the brink of mutiny and your militia aren’t much better.’

Nish rubbed his burning thigh. The healers had worked
miracles on his wounds during the long voyage but the brutal march felt as
though it had torn the muscle deep down. He had driven himself this far through
sheer, grinding determination though it would not carry him much further.

‘I know, Lieutenant, but what else can I do? We’re all that
stands between Stilkeen, the void, and the end of human life on Santhenar. If
Vomix catches us, he’ll cut us all down, and a lot more will be lost than our
brief lives.’

‘Then we’d better leave the path and make it harder for them
to find us, but we still have to rest.’

‘If we leave the path, we’ll get lost,’ said Nish.

‘As long as we put our backs to the sea and keep climbing we
can’t go too far astray,’ said Persia. ‘And when we top this range, we’ll see
the long plain of Morrelune; we can hardly miss it.’

They trudged across broken country for another exhausting
hour and, several ridges away, out of sight from the path, camped for the
night. Nish slept restlessly, knowing that the opposition was too vast and too
powerful. He’d had one miracle victory already in this campaign; he could not
hope to repeat it in open battle.

They climbed through equally rough ridge lands for two more
days and, around midnight on the fourteenth day, finally reached a broad area
of level ground, partly obscured by low-lying mist.

Nish drew everyone back down into the shelter of the trees,
by a trickling stream, and lit a stub of candle so he could check the map.
Persia sat beside him, kneading her calf muscles with her good hand. Her broken
arm was healing but it was still weak. The last day’s march had been as hard as
the first and everyone was footsore and bone-weary.

‘This has to be the plain of Morrelune,’ Nish said to
Flangers and Clech. ‘Tell your men we’ll have a break for twenty minutes, and
they’d better fill their water skins.’

When they returned, he went on, ‘The plain forms a crescent
of flat land separating the coastal range we’ve just climbed from the ridges
running up to the high mountains. Maelys’s home, Nifferlin, was up there.’

Memories stirred, of the terrible time after her little
sister had broken him out of Mazurhize, and Maelys had shepherded him up into
the mountains. Nish had been ill and delirious, and yet he had a vague memory
of her carrying him at some stage, which was incredible. Afterwards he had
treated her shabbily, and he had not properly made amends. Too late now. He
forced the distracting thoughts away.

‘The plain is about four leagues long,’ said Persia, ‘but
only a league wide at its broadest point, and we’re at the northern tip.
Morrelune must be a couple of leagues to our left.’

The four of them studied the map. ‘We’ll have to go
carefully now,’ said Flangers. ‘The other armies will be camped within striking
distance of Morrelune, and …’

‘My head will be a great prize to any of their commanders,’
said Nish. ‘I know.’

‘I don’t suppose there’s a chance they’ll fight each other?’
said Clech, who was shivering. To Nish it was a mild spring night, but not for
someone who came from hot, steamy Gendrigore.

Nish shrugged; the question was unanswerable.

‘We’ll skirt the northern end of the plain and continue up
on this track,’ he said, tracing it across the map with a fingertip. ‘It runs
into the mountain path about a league west of Morrelune. We’ll sneak down it
until we see the palace, then take cover and wait. The enemy armies won’t have
camped up there –’

‘Why not?’ said Clech, thumping his massive thighs, which
had wasted while his broken legs were healing.

‘There’s no water. The armies will camp below the plain
where there are springs aplenty. Let’s move out.’

They skirted the end of the plain, marched up along the path
for some hours and, a little before dawn on the fifteenth day, he crested a
rise, with a silent Persia beside him, looked down and saw the lights of his
father’s palace below them.

Nish stopped, breathing heavily. The last time he’d seen
Morrelune, dragged there by his father’s guards, it had been framed by the
rearing mountains immediately behind it, and it had looked airy, delicate and
stunningly beautiful. A crescent-shaped lake, called the Sacred Lake, curved
around its northern side, and from there both the palace and the framing
mountains were reflected.

Sets of broad steps rose on all four sides to a wide
promenade surrounding the palace, which was built from white and golden stone.
It consisted of nine levels, tapering upwards, each being like an open temple
supported on many columns arranged in interlinked circles.

There were no walls, not even in the highest level where
Jal-Nish had dwelt, which was roofed over with a sky-piercing spire covered in
lapis lazuli. The God-Emperor had no need of walls, for no one would have dared
to spy on him, and with the tears he could even control the weather around his
palace.

But not any more. He was gone and Morrelune had been
transformed; it was ablaze with light like a glowing jewel, but it was now
Stilkeen’s, and Nish turned away hastily.

He could not make Mazurhize out from here, since it lay
another half a league across the plain. Mazurhize, the grimmest prison in the
empire, was surrounded by a vast expanse of paving, though all he could see
were the mist-haloed lamps around the four gigantic, tower-mounted
wisp-watchers that scanned the paving with relentless, microscopic precision.

It was the converse of Morrelune in every respect – it
too had nine levels, but they tapered downwards, for the prison lay entirely
underground and was massive, dark and claustrophobic. The ninth level, the dankest,
most putrid and festering of them all, contained only a single cell and it had
been reserved for the God-Emperor’s son. That was where Nish had served out his
ten-year sentence.

At the memories, his chest tightened and he fought to
control the frantic impulse to run,
anywhere
.

‘Nish?’ said Persia. ‘Are you all right?’

‘Just remembering my prison days,’ he said lightly.

She laid a hand on his shoulder and the panic eased, but it
wasn’t going to go away. As long as there was an empire, and he was an outlaw,
the threat remained.

In Nish’s eyes Morrelune was equally tainted, for when his
ten years were up he had been taken to his father’s court and tempted beyond
endurance. He had almost broken; he had gone so very close, but in the end the
proof demanded by Jal-Nish as the price of fealty had been too high.

He had repudiated his father, who had then, to punish Nish,
shown him the perfectly preserved body of his beloved Irisis, in a crystal
coffin. She had looked exactly as she had the moment before she’d been slain,
ten years before. Irisis might still have been alive, save for the thread-like
seam where her head had been rejoined to her body.

Subsequently, Jal-Nish had claimed that he could bring her
back from the dead, exactly as she had been before death, and Nish had been
half-mad with longing, but he had fought it and rejected his father once more.
He would never again be tempted; yet neither could he entirely free himself
from the desperate yearning to have her back.

The sound of brass sliding against brass shook him from his
reverie – Persia was surveying the eastern side of the plateau through a
fieldscope.

‘I can see lights in three places, Nish – army camps.’
She pointed them out.

‘There were supposed to be five armies,’ Nish fretted. ‘Where
are the others?’

‘If they’re further down the ridges, we wouldn’t see them
from here.’

Nor if they’re up here somewhere, hunting me, he thought.
‘Take a look at Morrelune. It doesn’t seem quite right.’

She trained the fieldscope on the palace and let out a yelp
of dismay.

‘What is it?’ he whispered. ‘Have you recognised someone?
Father?
’ No, not at this distance,
surely.

‘The palace still has the
shape
of Morrelune, but –’

‘You’ve been here before?’

‘I accompanied Yulla, three years ago,’ said Persia, ‘when
she came to plead for the return of her monopolies. The God-Emperor turned her
away, of course. See for yourself.’