The Destiny of the Dead (The Song of the Tears Book 3) (60 page)

‘I don’t want to know about your sordid private life,’ said
Nish hastily.

‘And neither does sweet little Maelys, I’m sure,’ said
Flydd. ‘Look, she’s blushing again. I’ve never met anyone else who colours so
easily nor, now that I think about it, so prettily. You could do a lot worse,
Nish.’

Nish frowned, looking anywhere but at Maelys, who turned
away hastily, her cheeks crimson now.

‘What are you talking about?’ they both said at the same
time.

Flydd gave them a superior smile. ‘I’m right; you’ll see.
Let’s go down and you can brief me on what everyone has been up to.’

‘I’d like to know what
you’ve
been up to.’

‘There isn’t time to tell it twice. Have you got anything to
eat? I’d forgotten how hungry this old body gets.’

After gratifying expressions of astonishment at Flydd’s
reversion from everyone except Malien, who had known the old Flydd well but not
met the renewed version, they briefly told him their tales. Maelys noticed that
Persia kept staring at Flydd, a wistful yearning in her dark eyes. What was it
about the old scoundrel?

‘Just as well you brought back chthonic fire,’ he said,
munching on curled-up shavings of spiced, preserved meat from Malien’s stores.
It was as black as char, as hard as a lump of wood and so spicy that it lifted
the roof off Maelys’s mouth, but Flydd ate it with equanimity. ‘I didn’t find
any.’

‘Too busy looking after yourself?’ said Yggur. ‘Having a
holiday at our expense?’

The old rivalry between them was as strong as ever, only
this time Yggur was at the disadvantage and he did not like it.

‘I wouldn’t call it a holiday, exactly.’ Flydd directed a
sympathetic glance at Yggur though, judging by his scowl, he did not appreciate
that either. ‘I figured I could leave the fire to you. After all, you had a
head start.’

‘How did you know we were still alive?’ said Yggur.

‘Several times, when I was using the staff, I picked up fleeting
images of far-off places, such as the Tower of a Thousand Steps and Mistmurk
Mountain.’

‘Where have you been, anyhow?’

‘When I left Roros I made a portal to Blemph, in Faranda,
and consulted the greatest Aachim mancers there. They concluded that the
serpent staves were linked to the caduceus, and to each other, which should
have been obvious, had I thought about it. I then knew you three were alive,
and from your destinations you must have been searching for chthonic fire,
which freed me to do other things.’

‘We tried to go to Blemph from Stassor,’ said Maelys,
staring at his scarred, familiar face. She’d only known it for a day, yet it
seemed more right than the renewed Flydd she’d known for months. He was his
old, irascible but kindly self again; the mean streak was no longer evident.
‘But the caduceus wouldn’t take us there.’

‘If I was there at the time, it could not open another
portal to the same place.’

‘About that …’ began Nish.

‘What?’ said Flydd.

‘How come you didn’t make a portal at the Range of Ruin, or
afterwards? You could have saved –’

‘Don’t you trust me, Nish?’ Flydd said mildly.

‘Of course I do.’

‘Then you shouldn’t need to ask. You know that making
portals is the greatest and most difficult Art of all.’

‘What sort of an answer is that?’

‘They’re moving,’ called Clech from the lookout.

Maelys, Nish, Flydd and Yggur went to the top of the next
ridge, and the others followed. Morrelune was below them and to the right,
looking much as it had months ago, for in the brilliant sunlight the fire
palace Stilkeen had made of it could not be seen clearly.

Maelys squinted at the paved roof of Mazurhize, between the
four wisp-watchers, wondering if her family could still be alive, but the blank
stones told her nothing.

‘Here they come,’ said Persia.

On the seaward side of Mazurhize, a large army was moving up
the ridge onto the plain and assembling in front of Morrelune. ‘Who is it?’
said Flydd.

Persia focussed her brass fieldscope. ‘It’s flying Vomix’s
standard.’

‘His personal standard?’ said Flydd. ‘Or his banner as the
God-Emperor’s seneschal for Roros?’

‘His personal standard – a spiked fist on a sea of
red.’

Persia passed back the fieldscope and Flydd checked the
edges of the plain. Maelys waited impatiently, and finally he said, ‘The other forces
are also coming out. It’s going to be a battle of five armies.’

‘Plus our mighty force,’ said Nish ironically. ‘Don’t forget
us, Flydd.’

Flydd pushed the brass tubes together and handed the
fieldscope back to Persia. ‘We’d better join them.’

‘They’ll cut us down!’

‘The son of the God-Emperor has to be there,’ said Flydd,
who seemed unfazed by the overwhelming numbers of the enemy. ‘This is your
hour, Nish. It’s time to stake your claim.’

‘I’ve told you a hundred times, I will not become my
father.’

‘There’s no need to get excited. You promised to overthrow
him ten years ago, you’ve repeated that promise over and again, and you can’t
retreat now. What kind of message would that send your long-suffering people
– that the thugs of the empire had the courage to face Stilkeen for what
they could get out of it, but you were too afraid to defend those who put their
faith in you?’

Maelys felt for Nish; Flydd had deftly manipulated him into
doing what he wanted. And yet, ever since she had helped Nish escape from
Mazurhize they had been fighting to reach this point, so why was he hanging
back? It wasn’t fear of dying, she knew – at least, not for himself.

Nish met her eyes. ‘If you get a chance, run for it,’ he
said quietly. ‘We’re doomed, but –’

‘What do you take me for?’ she hissed. ‘I’ll be standing
beside you until the end, whatever it may be … and we’re going to win!’

The ever-present worries about her family rose again but,
Maelys realised, Mazurhize was probably the safest place for them right now.

Feeling a little stronger for Maelys’s faith in him,
Nish collected his pack and made sure his weapons were in good order. The women
and men of his militia shook his hand as he went down the line, and Yulla’s
troops, mostly veterans of the lyrinx war who were older than he was, clapped
him on the back. He swallowed hard and did his best to look confident of
victory, though he did not think he was fooling anyone.

As they prepared to march out, Persia fell in behind him,
hand on the hilt of her rapier. He looked around, her dark eyes met his, and he
had to make amends before it was too late.

‘I’m really sorry,’ he said.

‘Why, Nish?’ she said politely.

‘For the things I said in Roros, and the way I treated you.
I know it was unforgivable –’

She gave him one of those warm, lovely, yet slightly sad
smiles; he hadn’t seen one in ages. ‘I forgave you long ago.’

‘But –’

‘Sometimes you have an awkward way with words, Nish, but
your deeds are clear as crystal.’

He frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Even after I’d helped Yulla to manipulate you, you risked
your life for me at the monastery, and that was too much.’

‘Too much?’

‘It raised you too far above me. The gap was unbreachable.’

Nish didn’t have a clue what she was talking about. ‘But …
you’ve been so cool to me. I was sure you were still furious.’

‘I had to stay cool. I – I cared –
care
too much for you, and it’s now
clear that it can never be.’

‘I don’t understand,’ he said.

‘Perhaps it’s just as well.’

He could see the ache in her eyes now. For
him
? ‘What will you do afterwards …?’

‘If we survive?’

‘Yes.’

‘My seven-year indenture to Yulla ends here, one way or the
other, and if I survive, I must make my own way in the world.’ She glanced
down, gnawing her lip. ‘I’m really afraid of that. Yulla has looked after me ever
since I … came to her, but who will take care of me once I leave? The world can
be a cruel place when you’re by yourself.’

It was a side of the strong, competent Persia that he had
not seen before, an unexpected fragility, and again he wondered what had
happened to her when she was young. ‘If
I
survive, you must come –’

‘That is kind of you, but no.’

‘Well, thank you for being my bodyguard,’ he said after a
pause, ‘though I don’t think your skills can save me this time.’

The sadness was back in her eyes. ‘No, I don’t think they
can. We’d better go down.’

At the head of the troop, Clech was fiddling with a long
lance. He raised it high and a yellow banner fluttered from its end, with a
single silver star in the middle.

‘Sewed it myself,’ grinned Clech. ‘What’s an army without a
standard to fight under?’

‘Thank you,’ said Nish. ‘Lead on.’

Clech, who was hardly limping at all now, led the tiny force
down the ridge, onto the plain and along it towards Morrelune, heading for a
large space between Vomix’s huge army and the sizeable one of the mercenary
adventurer, Hackel. Two smaller armies stood further away, one led by Seneschal
Lidgeon from Fadd, and another that no one could identify, while the fifth
force, the Imperial Guard of some eight hundred men commanded by General Nosby,
stood closest to Morrelune.

‘This is suicide, Flydd,’ said Nish.

‘Keep going,’ said Flydd, unperturbed. ‘I’ll think you’ll
find Vomix is more worried than you are.’

‘He couldn’t be!’

From this close, even in bright sunlight, Morrelune’s nine
levels, its broad encircling steps and towering columns, and the
heaven-piercing spire on top, were wreathed in Stilkeen’s orange and yellow
fire. One edge of the Sacred Lake could just be seen behind it, and the
mountains beyond that.

As his little force wheeled and moved between the mighty
ones, there came a chorus of catcalls and jeers from Vomix’s army.

‘Ignore them,’ Nish said over his shoulder. ‘They don’t know
what we know.’

Thankfully, no one asked him to explain, since there was nothing
behind his brave words.

Vomix trotted his horse to the fore, glaring at Nish across
a hundred spans of paved plain, and then at Maelys, to his left. Nish felt a
tremble beginning in his right knee, and had to clench his injured thigh until
it burned, to stiffen his leg.

‘I’ll
have
you,
when I’m done with him,’ said Vomix to Maelys, and his grotesquely scarred face
broke into a sickening leer. ‘And you,’ he said to Persia.

Maelys choked down on her instinctive cry, swayed, but
managed to stand firm. Nish was glad she had; if she had broken, he did not
think he could have defied the brute. Persia stiffened but said nothing.

Vomix raised the arm tipped with the triangular spike, which
was stained with old brown blood – monks’ blood, presumably. A trumpet
blasted; his army performed a right turn, all six thousand men at once, and the
front three rows lowered their lances. The army moved slowly forwards, and the
front line began curving around from either end to encircle Nish’s force.

They’ll cut us down, he thought, then seize the fire and
offer it to Stilkeen. We’ve lost before we begin.

‘Hold your nerve,’ Flydd said quietly.

‘If you’ve got any kind of a plan, now would be a good time
to reveal it,’ said Yggur.

‘I was waiting to see what Stilkeen would do,’ said Flydd,
‘but all right.’

He moved back into the open space behind Nish’s troops,
lifted his serpent staff above his head, then slammed it down so hard that it
cracked a paving stone.

‘Flydd,’ Nish gasped. ‘What are you doing?’

It was a direct challenge, not just to Vomix and the other
generals, but to Stilkeen itself, and he turned towards the fire palace,
expecting the
being
to fly forth in
world-shattering wrath.

It did not. However, with a rumble and a roar, with flashes
of lightning at the points of the compass and a rolling heave of the ground
beneath them, an enormous portal formed behind Flydd, a shimmering circle a
good ten spans in diameter. It was mist-grey in the centre but crackling with
static electricity around its periphery.

Vomix’s horse reared up onto its back legs, pawing at the
air and whinnying shrilly, and he struggled to control it. His army stopped
abruptly, staring at the uncanny sight in wonder and unease. The empire had
been taught that all mancery was controlled by the God-Emperor or his appointed
servants, yet Flydd had just worked the mightiest Art of all – portal
making. What would he do next?

‘Cut them down, you swine!’ Vomix roared.

The front line of his army did not move.

‘What’s Flydd up to?’ said Yggur.

‘I haven’t the faintest idea,’ said Nish.

And then, from within the portal, he heard the rhythmic
tread of a host of marching soldiers, and shortly a ten-wide rank of tall,
dark-haired men came forth. They had faint crests over the tops of their heads
and exceptionally long fingers that wrapped all the way around the hilts of
their swords. Their leader was young and burly, dark of skin and eye, and
carried a blade that must have been a span long.

‘When the empire is held in thrall by scoundrels,’ said
Flydd in an amplified voice that echoed back from the surrounding ranges, ‘one
must look outside for aid. And so I have.’

‘Why, you old villain,’ cried Nish. ‘Why didn’t you tell us
what you’d been up to?’

‘There wouldn’t have been any surprise,’ said Tulitine. ‘Nor
any theatre – and at moments like these, theatre matters more than
might.’

Flydd boomed. ‘One thousand Aachim from Faranda, led by Lord
Garthor.’

‘Take Nish!’ Vomix bellowed.

Flydd saluted him ironically. ‘Your army is too gutless.’

And so they proved to be, for Vomix’s army still hesitated
and the opportunity to crush Nish’s force was lost. Half of the thousand Aachim
had come forth already, formidable fighting men in armour that would repel most
sword blows, and even longbow arrows.