The Destiny of the Dead (The Song of the Tears Book 3) (62 page)

‘How many is Vomix bringing?’

She looked through her fieldscope. ‘Just himself, a standard
bearer and a witness.’

‘Then I must do the same.’

‘But –’

‘Ranking my allies behind me would mean that I lacked
confidence in myself,’ said Nish. ‘I will march behind my standard bearer,
Clech, with one old friend as witness. Maelys, will you stand beside me?’

‘Me?’ she squeaked. Vomix had suffered excruciating agony
because of her, and she knew he wanted to make her suffer equally.

‘I need you.’

Maelys could not imagine why, but since he had asked, how
could she refuse? She took a deep breath. ‘Then I will come.’

Clech led them out, and she felt very small and conspicuous
in the vast paved space between the armies. On her left, Vomix’s flapping
standard sounded like a whip being cracked; to her right, Hackel’s pennant
showed a black jackal on a blue background. The officer in the white uniform
was General Nosby, behind the flag of the Imperial Guard. Renowned for his
loyalty to the God-Emperor, Nosby, at least, was unlikely to be after Nish’s
blood.

They came together. Nosby was a tall, bluff man with white
hair and pouched eyes. He had lost a lot of weight recently and did not look as
though he’d slept in a week, which was understandable. If Vomix took over, he
would slaughter everyone loyal to the former God-Emperor, including Nosby and
his entire family.

Hackel the Jackal was lean, wiry, and tremendously hairy.
His yellow-brown eyes burned with a hunter’s intensity, he had a snout of a
nose and his underslung jaw was studded with canine teeth. When he moved, it
was with an alert, eager step, as though he were straining at the leash,
longing to run down his prey. On his left hip was a short sword with tendrils
of white fumes drifting up from its scabbard; a small leather bag the size of a
wine skin swung from his right hip.

Seneschal Vomix strode up, brandishing his spike-ended right
arm, and Maelys stared at him in horror. He had never been a handsome man but,
after the touch of her taphloid had inverted his aura months ago, his face
resembled a painting that had been ripped into pieces and rudely pasted back
together.

‘We meet again, Cryl-Nish,’ he said, bowing ironically, but
his eyes were on her, and they said,
You’ll
pay for what you did to me
. He extended his left hand.

‘Don’t bother,’ said Nish. ‘What do you want?’

Vomix’s eyes glittered and he dropped his hand. ‘The
fifteenth day is nearly up. Do you have the pure fire?’

‘Do you?’ said Nish, looking at Vomix, and then Hackel, and
Nosby.

‘I don’t know what chthonic fire is,’ said Nosby wearily. ‘I
am here to defend my liege lord’s realm, as I swore to do.’

‘Then it’s between us three,’ said Vomix. ‘Shall we draw
lots to be the first to approach Stilkeen? Or do you claim that right,
Cryl-Nish, as the son of the God-Emperor?’

Maelys could read Nish’s hesitation. Stilkeen was an enigma;
could its word be relied upon, or was it also planning revenge? And how would
it react if the chthonic fire they gave it was not pure enough?

If its offer was genuine, the first person to bring it the
true fire would be rewarded beyond his dreams, though, with Vomix and Hackel
waiting outside, he might not enjoy it long.

Yet if Stilkeen had revenge in mind, it might be better to
allow Vomix or Hackel to go first. It was unlikely that they had found true
fire, and if they had not, let its wrath fall upon them. However, if they had
found true fire, the game was lost.

‘I do not claim that right,’ said Nish at last.

His brow shone with sweat; he was afraid he’d made the wrong
decision. Maelys noted that both Vomix and Hackel were smiling. They had also
read him.

‘Then it will be lots,’ said Vomix, drawing some tally
sticks from a pocket.

‘Put them away,’ said Hackel. ‘I enjoy a wager, but I won’t
have anyone tilting the odds against me.’

Vomix pocketed the tally sticks. ‘Do you have a better
alternative?’

Hackel considered the standard bearers and witnesses. ‘You
have the only guileless face among us,’ he said to Maelys. ‘Draw a large circle
on the ground.’

With her knife, Maelys described a wobbly circle on the
paving stones.

‘Pick up three pieces of gravel, the same size, and mark
them with a V, N and H.’

‘I’ll make my own mark,’ said Vomix.

‘The devil you will,’ said Hackel. ‘No one touches them but
the girl.’

Maelys scouted around until she found three suitable pieces
of gravel, inscribed the letters on them and held them out so Nish, Vomix and
Hackel could inspect them.

‘We’ll walk away,’ said Hackel. ‘You, girl, are to stand in
the circle, shake the gravel in your hand and hurl it upwards. The piece of
gravel that falls closest to the centre of the circle indicates the first to
confront Stilkeen, and the furthest piece, last.’

‘What if she cheats?’ Vomix said sourly.

‘How can she?’ said Hackel.

A layer of grey cloud passed across the setting sun, and in
the sudden gloom the fire palace flared and flickered. Maelys did not want to
go near it. Was she going to meet the death the Pit of Possibilities had
predicted, in Morrelune?

She hurled the gravel straight up and moved out of the way.
One piece fell inside the circle, a second near the rim, and the third, further
off.

‘An unambiguous result,’ said Hackel. ‘Pick up the stones,
one at a time.’

Hackel, Nish and Vomix approached. The outer stone was
marked H.

‘Oh, well,’ Hackel said philosophically.

The second stone had a V on it. And the third, an N.

‘So Cryl-Nish approaches Stilkeen first,’ said Vomix. ‘And
I’ve a feeling the reward is not going to be to his liking. We will assemble
outside Morrelune in ten minutes, then go in together.’

Nish led his allies forwards: Yggur, Tulitine and
Flydd, Maelys, Malien and Persia, Garthor representing the Aachim, Ryll and
Liett the lyrinx, Galgilliel the Faellem, and Zofloc the Whelm.

Nosby was waiting below the broad steps of Morrelune with
two uniformed officers. Vomix came marching up from the left with six men, and
Hackel from the right with his four. They stopped, eyeing each other warily.

Maelys tried to conceal herself behind Yggur, though she
knew Vomix could see her. Surely that unpleasantly thick and rancid smell
emanating from him, like the fumes from a cauldron of congealed blood,
indicated that there was something desperately sick inside him.

‘Shall we go in?’ said Hackel with a toothy gambler’s smile.

He’s no more to be trusted than Vomix, Maelys thought.

They formed into four separate ranks and prepared to march
into Morrelune together. As they reached the first step a current of warm air
rushed past them, the structural flames stood out more brightly, and Maelys
heard a distant roaring, like the inward breath of a furnace.

‘Do you think it’s wise to carry the caduceus and the
serpent staffs into Morrelune?’ said Malien in a low voice.

‘Good point,’ said Flydd. ‘Give them here.’

He fitted the two serpent staffs around the caduceus, as it
had been when Stilkeen first appeared and, with a flash of red fire, they
welded themselves back in place. He raised the complete caduceus, struggling
with its weight, climbed the steps and slammed the tip into the marble paving
stone directly before the open doorway of Morrelune.

Thunder rolled, cracks zigzagged out from the riven stone,
and Maelys shuddered. How would Stilkeen meet this challenge?

‘Be very careful now,’ Yggur said in a low voice. ‘Close to
Stilkeen, our Arts may not work properly – or at all.’

Flames leaped up from the palace, higher than ever, but they
gave forth neither heat nor any smell of burning. They weren’t eating the stone
away, they were a replacement for it, and they appeared to burn without ever
consuming anything. Maelys did not want to go near the place.

The hum rose again and a white barrier appeared behind
Morrelune, like the one Nish had mentioned seeing earlier, through Persia’s
fieldscope. It slanted up from the ground to the sky until it blocked out the
mountains completely, then its dazzling whiteness slowly faded to translucency
and moving shadows appeared behind it – the blurred shapes of beasts and
monstrosities.

‘There’s thousands of them,’ Maelys whispered, pressing her
hand against her fluttering heart.

‘Millions and billions uncounted,’ said Yggur. ‘We’re seeing
the barrier that protects our world from the void, made visible. Stilkeen
threatened to empty the void into Santhenar if we failed to give it the true
fire. And if it does –’

In the unseen distance, something made a low, purring yet
mechanical hum.

‘Do you think that could be Klarm?’ said Nish, looking
around.

‘There’s no reason to suppose it is,’ said Flydd. ‘Nor that
he’d help us.’

Maelys covertly studied the other three leaders, trying to
guess what they would do. Vomix was nervously licking his ruined lips; Hackel’s
broad and unwavering smile might have been stretched out with hooks, while
Nosby’s cheeks were bloodless and he was struggling to control a twitch near
his left eye.

‘We’d better go in,’ said Flydd casually. If he was anxious
about meeting Stilkeen, his gaunt, ugly face did not show it.

‘You first,’ muttered Vomix.

He was afraid, which did not make Maelys feel any better.

Flydd returned Vomix’s earlier bow, mockingly, and headed
for the entrance of the palace. Maelys followed, keeping so close to Nish that
her shoulder touched his upper arm. The flaming walls, floor and ceiling burned
bright but cold and she felt no more than a tickle as she moved into the fire
– it was not of this world, barely here. Had Stilkeen shifted the
dimensions slightly to make it so? Her mind whirled at the thought; other
dimensions were, like Yggur’s dimensionless boxes, beyond her imagining.

Beneath the fire, the original stone floor appeared solid,
though when she stepped on it her foot came down with a thud; it was slightly
lower than it seemed. Stepping carefully, she crept along the grand entrance
hall.

Every so often, as if from the corner of her eye, she caught
another glimpse of the translucent barrier and the shadows moving in the void
behind it. How much would it take to release that alien horde into Santhenar,
and if they got in, could humanity survive? The lyrinx war had begun after a
mere handful of lyrinx escaped from the void, and it had lasted a hundred and
fifty years.

Ahead now, at the heart of the palace, stood Jal-Nish’s
majestic audience chamber, a vast oval space a hundred spans by sixty, with its
ceiling soaring fifteen spans above them. Sweeping curves of slender golden
columns marked the edges of the chamber, the flames coiling in impenetrable
walls between them. All was monumental, eerie and beautiful. This was a room
suited to a God-Emperor, or to a
being
.

‘There it is,’ breathed Nish as something moved at the far
end of the chamber where his father’s throne had once stood.

Stilkeen hung suspended in webs of fire and shadow, which
had the lazy swirl of flames seen through the door of a furnace. Yalkara had
said that it could take any aspect imaginable, but it wore much the same guise
as when it had abducted Jal-Nish – the broad, winged skull, the
membrane-covered yellow eyes and the massively muscled body. Maelys wondered
why it still looked the same. Could it be trapped in this one form? Might that
be a weakness they could use against it?

‘Why the fire webs?’ said Tulitine.

‘In its severed state, the physical worlds cause it great
pain –’ said Yggur.

‘And me,’ she said wryly.

‘– which gets worse the longer it spends here,’ Yggur
continued. ‘But by
shifting
the
palace slightly, to keep our physical world at a distance, and remaking the
building in flame, Stilkeen can remain here relatively pain-free. You’d better
give me the taphloid,’ he said quietly to Maelys.

‘Why?’ She didn’t want to give it up. It was the only
protection she had.

‘When you’re wearing it, Stilkeen won’t be able to see you.’

Maelys eyed the great creature hanging in its webs. Its eyes
seemed to be looking directly at her. ‘I don’t want it to see me.’

‘It has to. Give it here.’

She handed the taphloid over and Yggur moved aside so that
Nish and Maelys were at the head of the procession.

Stilkeen stirred as they approached, raised its
needle-toothed head, and its voice had the thundering reverberation of air
being pumped into a furnace.

‘Who brings the
uncorrupted
chthonic fire will be rewarded beyond their dreams. Who keeps true fire from
Stilkeen will suffer such agonies as no human has ever felt. Have you brought
the fire?’

When Nish didn’t move or speak, Flydd nudged him in the
middle of the back. Nish squared his broad shoulders and stepped forwards,
putting on a show of confidence he could not be feeling. He bowed to Stilkeen,
though not in subservience; rather, as one equal to another. Maelys was amazed
that he could do so; she was so afraid that she would have fallen on her face.

‘Lord Stilkeen,’ said Nish sonorously, ‘we have brought you
fire from three sources, as pure and white as we could find, and preserved as
best we could. We cannot tell if it is the fire you seek.’

‘Bring it to me,’ said Stilkeen, and Maelys thought she saw
a trace of eagerness in its small yellow eyes as the nictitating membranes
swept back and forth across them, protecting them from contact with even the
air of the real world.

Yggur handed three flat black circles, the dimensionless
boxes, to Maelys. Each had a different marking on the outside, to show where
the contents had been found.

‘Why are you giving them to me?’ she squawked.