The Destiny of the Dead (The Song of the Tears Book 3) (63 page)

‘You’re the best person to do it,’ he said quietly.
‘Stilkeen won’t see you as a threat, since –’

‘I can’t use my gift! What if it doesn’t like what’s in the
boxes?’

‘I don’t know what it will do, Maelys, but rest assured,
it’ll happen to us as well.’

That was not comforting.

‘Give them to me,’ said Nish, whose knuckles were white on
the hilt of his blade. ‘It’s my job. I don’t want Maelys –’

‘Yggur’s right, Nish,’ Flydd said quietly. ‘She’s the best
chance we’ve got.’

Maelys felt better for knowing that Nish was worried about
her, though only a little. She took a small step, then another. How was one
supposed to address a
being
, anyhow?
Would it be insulted if she got it wrong, or wouldn’t it care?

‘Oh Great Stilkeen, Roamer of the Celestial Realms –’
she began.

‘Give – me – white – fire,’ said Stilkeen,
reaching out. The webs of fire and shadow must have been sticky, for they made
zipping sounds as its movements separated them.

And despite the protection of the webs, it was in pain.
Maelys could sense its torment, as she had the first time she’d seen it. ‘I
hope these can ease your suffering.’ She bowed low.

Stilkeen regarded her silently, then reached out with one
enormous hand.

‘Th-this fire came from the Tower of a Thousand Steps,’ said
Maelys. ‘I found it deep in the icy foundations.’ She handed Stilkeen the first
dimensionless box.

Stilkeen plunged one hand in through the blackness –
clearly it had no fear of being enveloped by the box – and plucked out a
fistful of white fire, which it tossed into the air and swallowed. Throwing the
dimensionless box to one side, it said, ‘Not pure enough.’

She handed it the second box. ‘This fire was clinging to the
shattered casket Yalkara hid long ago, deep below Mistmurk Mountain.’

Stilkeen put its thick lips to the box and sucked out the
fire. ‘Purer, but not pure.’

Her skin crawled. This was their last chance, and if it
failed, then what? She gave it the third box. ‘This fire I found on the ruined
world of Aachan, where it had been taken up by toadstools growing in a canyon.’

Stilkeen hooked a nail into the non-existent edge of the
dimensionless box and peeled it apart into two identical black circles. Fire
flickered between them but it was no longer white – it had gone a raw,
bleeding red. After studying it carefully, Stilkeen put one black circle over
the other until they fused into one, sealing in the fire, then crushed the
dimensionless box in its fist until it vanished.

‘Your passage from Aachan corrupted the white fire and
rendered it useless. Is that all?’

Dread was now an icy waterfall down Maelys’s back. ‘There is
more on Aachan. You can easily –’

‘Stilkeen cannot go to Aachan; and fire cannot be brought
from Aachan without becoming corrupted.’ It looked her up and down,
incuriously. ‘As you tried honestly, you will not be consumed immediately. You
may yet serve.’

 
FORTY-TWO

Nish swallowed the lump in his throat as Maelys
shuffled away from Stilkeen. He had been so afraid for her that he could hardly
breathe. When she reached him he took her upper arm and drew her gently
backwards, and the rest of his company moved with them. Yggur slid the taphloid
into her hand and the
being’s
gaze
slipped off her onto Nish, then to Hackel and Vomix.

‘Well?’ it said.

Hackel glanced at Vomix, who did not speak.

‘I too have found white fire,’ said Hackel, putting his hand
into the bag slung on his belt. ‘I took it from the topmost chamber of
Yalkara’s abandoned fortress, Havissard, many years ago. I did not know what it
was, and I have always kept it in the sapphire case in which I found it. If it
was pure then, it should be pure still.’

Stilkeen’s yellow eyes narrowed to points. ‘In
Havissard
?’

‘Just so.’

‘Bring me the case.’

Surreptitiously, Hackel signed behind him to his men. What
was he up to?

From his bag, he withdrew a rectangular blue case, like a
jewel box, and slunk towards Stilkeen like the jackal that was his namesake.
Nish edged backwards until he felt Flydd’s hand touch his shoulder.

‘Don’t move a hair,’ whispered Flydd.

Hackel’s boots appeared to skim the flame floor without
touching the solid stone beneath. He went to his knees before Stilkeen, bowing
so low that it seemed insolent, and raising the case above his head. As
Stilkeen reached for it, Hackel’s thumb slid across a projection in its base.

The lid of the case flipped up and something exploded out of
it, unzipping and expanding at colossal speed – a light-touched net that
unfolded in the air, soaring up and over Stilkeen to envelop him, and every
winking shard of light reflecting from it marked a little tri-pronged barb. The
instant it touched, Stilkeen shrieked and began to writhe in agony.

Hackel’s men stormed the webs of fire and he whipped out a
fuming sword that was similarly light-touched. He was leaping up to thrust it
into the
being’s
throat when Stilkeen
dashed the net aside. Red welts were rising all over its hand and arm where the
barbs had touched it, the points concentrating the pain of contact with the
physical world. Had the net enveloped it completely, Stilkeen might have been
rendered helpless by the pain.

Its left arm lengthened; its hand expanded enormously and
shot towards Hackel, catching him immovably around the chest. His fuming sword
fell, repelling the flames in a circle as it struck the floor. Stilkeen’s right
hand became a hammer that went up, then slammed down onto the first soldier as
if driving a nail, smashing him into a smear on the floor. It whacked another
five times, finishing the others, before pulling back into a normal hand.

The room was silent now. As a demonstration of power, it had
been terrifyingly convincing.

Hackel tried to smile. ‘It was worth the gamble.’

‘Was – it?’ Stilkeen said in a staccato voice, as if
every word hurt now. It closed its enormous fist as if squeezing a lemon, and
when no more red sludge could be squeezed out of Hackel it tossed the crushed
bone-bag aside.

Nish avoided looking at the mess. Their fate hung on
Stilkeen’s slightest whim, and no one knew what might set it off.

‘Does – anyone – else – have –
fire?’ said Stilkeen, rubbing the welts and twitching.

Vomix’s men were backing away. Where was he? In the
confusion, he had slipped out, abandoning them. ‘You – red-haired –
man. Does – your – master – have – fire?’

‘No,’ whispered the red-haired officer. ‘Seneschal Vomix …’
He licked dry, flaking lips. ‘He planned to steal it from Nish.’

Stilkeen transformed an arm into a scythe and cut the
officer and his men down before they could move.

‘Anyone – fire?’ repeated Stilkeen. Its eyes narrowed;
it was looking behind Nish.

Outside, something hummed over the paved plain, then back
the way it had come. It can only be Klarm, Nish thought. In our most desperate
hour, he comes. But the hum faded and disappeared.

‘Master!’ cried a harsh, dead voice. ‘My new master.’

The reanimated Zofloc was lurching forwards, carrying a
small round glass flask whose contents were bubbling.

‘What – have – you – there?’ said
Stilkeen.

‘White fire, Master, purified of all baseness and
corruption. I distilled it myself.’

‘You – presume! How – could – you –
know – what – was – corrupt?’ Stilkeen’s mouth opened and
closed; little flames shivered up and down its throat. It shook its blistered
arm, making a faint moaning sound.

‘Try it, Master.’

Stilkeen swirled the flask, tasted some distilled fire on a
finger and spat it against a column. Pink flame belched up. Stilkeen dropped
the flask on the floor, put a huge foot on it and smashed it. With the other
foot, it did the same to the sorcerer, sending squirts of Zofloc in several
directions. One splattered the lower third of General Nosby’s white uniform.

Its feet returned to their normal size; Stilkeen swung back
into its webs and hung there, shivering and wincing. Its small eyes turned to
General Nosby. ‘And – you?’

‘I command the God-Emperor’s Imperial Guard, Your Highness,’
said Nosby, looking sick. ‘I am here to protect my God-Emperor.’

Stilkeen closed one claw upon another and an image of
Jal-Nish was painted on the air before them. His father’s naked body was the
mottled blue-green colour of a month-old corpse, and it had been strung up,
unmasked and upside-down, from the ceiling of the ninth level of Morrelune. The
seeping mouth was clustered with flies, as were the ruined nose, empty eye
socket and the hideous scars made by a lyrinx’s claws. Even with the tears, he
had never been able to heal himself, and Nish couldn’t bear to look.

‘Poor Father. He must have suffered terribly.’

‘So have my family, and thousands of others,’ said Maelys
coolly. ‘Your father made his own choices, while they suffered simply because
he ordered it.’

‘Even so,’ said Nish. ‘He was my father.’

‘That –
thing
– call – himself – God-Emperor?’ said Stilkeen.

‘He was to me,’ Nosby said, clearly shaken to see his
master’s great power and presence reduced to nothing.

‘No – God-Emperor,’ said Stilkeen. ‘Just –
pitiful, mortal – man.’

The image faded and its eyes moved back and forth over the
survivors. Nish wished he’d run while he had the chance. Stilkeen pulled at a
length of the flame-and-shadow web, bound it around its blistered hand and arm,
and pressed it down until it could barely be seen. Its pain appeared to ease.

‘You have no more fire to offer?’ said Stilkeen, speaking
smoothly again.

‘We searched everywhere,’ said Nish. ‘There was no pure
fire.’

‘Yet it exists, not far away,’ said Stilkeen. ‘It will be
preserved in a vessel made of corundite, the only substance that can maintain
it uncorrupted. I know the pure fire exists; I can
feel
it, but corundite does not permit me to locate it.’ Its eyes
narrowed, the needle teeth slid seamlessly together. ‘After the creatures from
the void have exacted retribution, they will find it for me.’

Stilkeen raised a hand and the flame ceiling thinned until
Nish could see the translucent barrier behind the palace, like an endless,
sky-high wall. It appeared more transparent than before, while the shapes
clustering on the other side were clearer and more menacing. Stilkeen was going
to open the void and no one could stop it.

Then, as they waited for their doom, the humming Nish had
heard earlier rose to a howl and an extraordinary contraption hurtled in
through the flame-wreathed entrance of Morrelune.

It had the deep keel and curving sides of a sea-going
galleon, save that they were made of brass interleaved with black metal
intricately decorated with silver. Its bow was high and pointed, with flaring
metal shields extending along the sides of the deck in place of rails, while
several white hooplike structures rose above the deck like covered wagons. An
inscription in flowing writing on the bow read,
Three Reckless Old Ladies
.

‘Reckless old ladies?’ said Nish, bemused.

A small javelard, set in a rectangular, box-like wooden
frame, was mounted behind the bow shields, and on a platform at the stern stood
a catapult on a swivelling mount.

The sky-galleon flashed by, skidded sideways across the
centre of the audience chamber, buffeting the flames all around, and a jowly
old woman with jiggling chins – Yulla, no less! – fired the
contents of the catapult point-blank at Stilkeen.

Nish couldn’t tell what she had fired, but Stilkeen let out
a shriek of agony, shrank to a quarter of its former size and wrapped the webs
of flame and shadow tightly about itself, shaking wildly and squealing.

The sky-galleon curved around towards everyone, dropped
sharply and its keel screeched across the solid floor beneath the flame.

‘Get in!’ yelled a little old lady, her eyes huge with
excitement in her lined face. She trotted along the deck, hurling rope ladders
over the side.

‘Lilis!’ said Maelys in astonishment, and ran for the
nearest ladder. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘I’ve retired from the Great Library to go adventuring,’
Lilis said, pulling on Maelys’s arm as she reached the top. ‘Quick!’

Nish scrambled up and the others followed. M’lainte, as
unkempt as ever, stood in the wheelhouse holding a protruding knob where the
wheel of a ship would normally have been mounted. It rather resembled the
controller she had made for the air-sled after the attack on the monastery.
‘Ready?’

‘Ready, set, go!’ shouted Lilis, as if she were ten again,
and leapt up and down, clapping her hands. ‘Beautiful shot, Yulla. Fire again.’

The sky-galleon took off with a jerk that threw everyone
against the wheelhouse, and began to circle the audience chamber. Yulla emptied
a bag of sand into the catapult bucket, hauled her bloated body into the seat,
aimed and fired again.

This time the sand went wide, save for a scatter which
struck the webs covering Stilkeen’s lower parts. It shrieked in agony, shot
upwards like an unbound spring and the clinging webs peeled apart, the fire
webs dangling below it, the webs of shadow sticking to the floor and wall.
Stilkeen propelled itself through an opening in the ceiling and the fire webs
were jerked up after it, out of sight.

‘Never has any face been so welcome, M’lainte,’ cried Nish,
shaking her hand.

‘I told you Yulla needed the air-sled,’ said M’lainte,
beaming all over her old face. ‘I made the sky-galleon from it. Er, you can let
go now.’

He released her hand. Maelys was looking at the three old
women in bemusement.