The Destiny of the Dead (The Song of the Tears Book 3) (61 page)

When the last had emerged, the portal sphinctered shut,
reopened and more Aachim marched out in a swirl of fog, led by a compact man
with flame-red hair.

‘The Aachim of Clan Elienor, numbering four hundred, from
Shazmak,’ Flydd announced gleefully. ‘Under the command of Yrael.’

Malien let out a glad cry, for Clan Elienor was her clan. As
she ran to Yrael, the sun caught her age-faded hair and, momentarily, it flamed
the same colour as his.

‘Karan’s hair was just that colour,’ said Yggur in a husky
voice. ‘It so reminds me of her …’

‘Elienor are a brave and noble clan,’ said Nish, ‘And I
remember Yrael well. With his people at my side, I can hope again.’

Vomix met Flydd’s eyes across a hundred spans of paving.
Flydd sketched him an exaggerated bow, withdrew the serpent staff from the
cracked paving and deliberately turned his back.

‘Take him down!’ cried Vomix to his archers, enraged by the
implication that he posed no threat at all.

Before they could do so, the Aachim formed into their deadly
flying wedge formation, pointed directly at Vomix’s position, and he stuttered,
‘H-hold your fire!’

Every eye in every army was now on Flydd as he sauntered to
his right and created a second portal, as large as the first but egg-shaped and
green. Who would come forth this time?

The marching footsteps were heavier, slower, and less
rhythmical, but nothing could be seen within, for this portal was full of
billowing steam which gushed out like a geyser. As it parted, Nish caught a
glimpse of a beautiful, forested world, and when he smelled its sweet, spicy
air, his heart leapt.

‘Five hundred lyrinx, from the world of Tallallame,’ Flydd
announced.

Hundreds of soldiers cried out; the entire mass of Vomix’s
army swayed backwards; further off, the smaller army that no one could identify
turned and began to creep away.

‘Boo!’ roared Flydd, his voice echoing off the mountains,
and the retreating army bolted.

‘Hold firm!’ bellowed Vomix. ‘Any man who moves will be
shot.’

‘Violence is the only hold you have over them,’ said Flydd.
‘It won’t be enough this time, Seneschal.’

‘And you would begin the lyrinx war all over again,’ cried
Vomix. ‘Truly, the God-Emperor was right to condemn you as a traitor.’

‘Jal-Nish only did one thing in the war,’ Flydd said coldly.
‘He ran like the cur he is, abandoning his loyal army to annihilation.’ He
turned away. ‘Come forth, people of Tallallame, in friendship!’

And out they came, a seven-wide rank of huge winged
humanoids as tall as bears, with red or green crests running across the top of
their enormous heads and chameleon colours shimmering across their armoured
outer skin. Their mouths were great with teeth, their hands were clawed, and
their folded wings were leathery.

‘Stand firm!’ Vomix ordered his quailing men. ‘Five hundred
lyrinx are nothing to us.’

‘They’ll tear Santhenar apart,’ cried a soldier at the
front.

‘It took us a hundred and fifty years to beat them last
time,’ said another.

‘Lyrinx!’ It roared through the ranks of troops like a tidal
wave. ‘They eat their victims. Run!’

‘Stand your ground!’ bellowed Vomix.

It was no use. Panic had set in and, though most of his
soldiers did hold their positions, many hundreds broke, fled across the plain
and disappeared into the scrub. None of Nish’s troops moved, and he was tempted
to give Vomix a derisory finger, but restrained himself.

Once all the lyrinx had marched out, they took position
beside the Aachim. At their head was a wingless male, smaller than most, and
Nish felt his spirits lift at the sight of him, and his consort who prowled
back and forth beside him. Though she had glorious, shimmering wings, she
lacked the thick, armoured outer skin of the other lyrinx – hers was fine
and transparent, revealing the almost human underlying skin. The male’s eyes,
and hers, searched the plain, he saw Nish and they hurried across.

‘Well met, old friend,’ said the male, extending a monstrous
hand, the claws politely retracted.

‘Ryll,’ said Nish, so moved that he felt tears sting his
eyes, for they had been enemies all through the lyrinx war, only to become
friends by the manner of its ending. He shook Ryll’s hand gingerly for, even
when the lyrinx held back, his grip was crushingly strong.

‘And Liett! I never expected to see either of you again, but
thank you, thank you.’ Nish shook hands with Liett, then, without thinking,
embraced her.

The lyrinx army let out a rumbling growl, all as one, at his
boldness, and Nish stepped back hastily. What had he been thinking?

Liett cuffed him across the chest, knocking him off his
feet, but picked him up at once and dusted him down, grinning so broadly that
she could have swallowed his head.

‘It is very good to see you,’ she said, then lowered her
voice. ‘Don’t ever do that again, for Ryll is a jealous husband and I cannot
answer for his fury, should he see an
old
human
fondling me in such an intimate manner. Aren’t you, Ryll?’

‘Beg pardon?’ said Ryll, pretending not to hear.

‘A jealous husband,’ roared Liett, flashing out her
beautiful wings in a fierce display.

‘Oh, insanely jealous,’ grinned Ryll, shaking Nish’s hand
again with both of his own. ‘When we’ve cleaned up this rabble, what say you
and I slip away for a jar or two?’

‘Nothing could give me greater pleasure,’ said Nish
wholeheartedly then, glancing sideways at Liett, ‘Er, assuming you
can
get away.’

‘Five hundred lyrinx,’ Flydd repeated, louder than before.
‘And as fighters, one lyrinx is worth two ordinary soldiers.’

‘Four!’ snapped Liett.

Ryll bowed to Flydd and said in a booming voice, ‘We have
answered your call, to show our gratitude for the way we were treated by you
and Nish in the past, and to demonstrate our cousinship with all the human
species of Santhenar – now and in the future.’

The portal closed, but Flydd was not finished yet. He now
created a smaller one between the Aachim and lyrinx.

‘Who on earth can this be?’ said Maelys softly.

‘I can’t imagine,’ said Nish.

The new portal was only half the size of the others, and the
air eddying from it felt bitterly cold and carried whirling flakes of snow that
swiftly melted in the warm air. From within, all he could hear was the faint
rustle of cloth on cloth, and a melodic jingling.

A golden-skinned man appeared, no taller than Nish but
reed-slender. A woman marched beside him, only Maelys’s height, though she was
slim of hip and narrow of chest.

‘I am Galgilliel,’ said the man.

‘And I am Lainor,’ said the woman. ‘Our three hundred and
fifty fighting men and women are here to represent the sole survivors of the
Faellem species. We remained behind in our southern forests two centuries ago
when Faelamor led the rest of our kind back to Tallallame, and to
self-immolation when they discovered what her folly had done to our beautiful
world.’ She came across to Ryll, who was twice her height and ten times her
bulk, and extended her hand. ‘You are the custodians of Tallallame now, and I
am sure no one could take better care of it.’

‘We’re slowly exterminating the void vermin that infested
the world at that time,’ said Ryll, ‘though the task will take many
generations.’

‘Do you ever see any trace of our ancestral selves?’ said
Lainor. ‘The Faellem who regressed to barbarism long ago? Or have they vanished
as well?’

‘They are shy and easily frightened,’ said Ryll, ‘but we see
them from time to time.’

‘We would so love to see Tallallame again,’ she said
wistfully. ‘Might we – one day –?’

‘Perhaps,’ said Ryll firmly. ‘But not yet.’

The portal appeared to close but reopened at once, now rimed
with ice. It had gone a frosty blue inside and Nish made out the clatter of
wooden-soled sandals.

‘The sorcerer Zofloc …
reanimated
,
and eighty Whelm,’ Flydd announced.

‘You old devil!’ cried Yggur admiringly. ‘You have been
busy.’

‘But Zofloc was dead,’ whispered Maelys, remembering the way
her skin had crept at his touch. ‘Yggur, you said his fall killed him.’

‘Flydd did say reanimated,’ said Yggur.

‘The way the dead in the Tower of a Thousand Steps were
brought back to life?’ asked Maelys, shuddering. ‘By shooting them with needles
of distilled fire?’

‘Let’s wait and see, shall we?’ said Yggur.

The clatter grew louder and out lurched Zofloc, who looked
almost as horrible as Maelys’s other nemesis, dead Phrune. The sorcerer’s grey
skin, the colour of lead, was touched with writhing worms of off-white fire;
his scarlet, protruding eyeballs sparkled from the twinklestones still stuck to
them, while jagged pieces of bone stuck out in a crest from the back of his
evacuated skull.

‘I expect he carried a needle of his distilled fire,’ said
Yggur, ‘and plunged it into himself as he lay dying.’

A good distance behind Zofloc, and looking at him askance,
came a disorderly throng of Whelm clad in loincloths or ragged robes. The men
carried jag-swords and the women long stilettos, but they had a forlorn,
hangdog air about them.

‘I thought the Whelm were a proud people,’ said Nish, who
had not encountered them before.

‘They are when they have a master,’ said Yggur. ‘Whelm are
born to serve and without a master they are miserable creatures. The Numinator
must have cast them off.’

The portal closed, but reopened almost at once, and out of
it stepped a woman of Nish’s age and height, at least seven months pregnant,
and an older man who had only one hand. Nish recognised the older man at once,
but the woman was so changed that he stared at her for a full minute before he
knew who she was, for her long dark hair was streaked with white, and she was
rather plumper than when he had known her.

‘Tiaan?’ said Nish.

She also looked at him without recognition, then smiled and
came across.

‘No one has heard anything about you for ten years,’ said
Nish, embracing her awkwardly, since her bump got in the way. ‘We were afraid
that Father had ordered you killed.’

‘I’m sure he would have,’ said Tiaan, a dimple flashing in
her cheek, ‘had I not foolishly destroyed all the nodes, thus delivering the
gift of Santhenar to him. He hunted us down, Father and me – you remember
Merryl?’

‘Very well,’ said Nish, smiling and shaking hands. He’d
always liked Tiaan’s father.

‘Jal-Nish threw us in prison down south, near our old
manufactory,’ Tiaan went on, ‘along with my mother, poor old Marnie. But six
months later we were set free and I was given work as an artisan. Marnie and
Father got back together, but …’

‘She was a terrible wife,’ said Merryl, ‘as you told me she
would be.’

‘Marnie ran away within the month,’ said Tiaan, ‘but I have
a good man now, and two children, and Merryl.’

‘You look happy,’ said Nish, pleased for her. ‘In all the
time I knew you, you never seemed happy.’

‘I wasn’t. I was always searching for something, but until I
found Father at the victory feast, I did not know what it was.’

‘Yet you, alone of all of us who sat down to the feast that
day ten years ago, were the one to find happiness. How oddly things turn out.
What are you doing here?’

‘So pregnant, you mean?’ said Tiaan. ‘I destroyed the nodes
and made it possible for your father to become God-Emperor, and I’ve never
stopped regretting that stupidity. Even if I cannot undo it, I had to be here.’

‘What about your children?’

‘If I don’t come back? I pray that I will, but if the worst
happens Marnie will look after them – it’s what she does best. I had to
help make up for the ill I’ve done, Nish. You do understand, don’t you?’

‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Better than anyone, and I’m very glad
to have you with me.’

 
FORTY-ONE

How had Flydd done so much, so quickly, Maelys
wondered. But then, who better to pull such an unlikely alliance together,
since he’d spent the last years of the war doing just that. It was another
reason for reverting to the old Flydd that people knew and trusted. No matter
how persuasive the renewed man might have been, he’d looked, and had been, too
different.

Stilkeen had not emerged from the palace but, within thirty
minutes, the military arrangements outside had been transformed. Vomix and
Seneschal Lidgeon had amalgamated their reduced forces, putting Vomix in
command of an army no less powerful than he’d had before.

Hackel had lost few men, since his mercenaries had come to
plunder the wealth of the God-Emperor, and their greed for loot outweighed
their unease. Nosby’s fiercely loyal Imperial Guard had stood firm to the man.

Nish’s allies now numbered two and a half thousand, a
powerful force, but still greatly outnumbered. Maelys stood behind him,
covertly watching these famous names from the pages of the Histories. They
might have been enemies once, but all seemed to be old friends now, and she
felt quite intimidated by them.

‘V-Vomix has raised a blue truce flag,’ called Persia. ‘He
wants to parley.’

‘Don’t go near him, Nish,’ said Maelys. ‘He means to kill
you.’

‘Hackel and Nosby are also raising parley flags,’ said
Persia.

‘The real enemy is still inside the palace,’ said Nish. ‘I
have to go, but I won’t be taking the pure fire, so killing me will do Vomix no
good.’

‘It’ll rid the empire of the one legitimate heir,’ said
Maelys.

Nish glanced at the sun, which hung not far above the
mountains to the west. ‘It’s getting late, and we’ve got to take the fire to
Stilkeen before it comes after us. I’m going to the parley.’

‘Not alone,’ said Persia.