The Destiny of the Dead (The Song of the Tears Book 3) (78 page)

He fell backwards, the mask went flying and Nish’s gut
tightened, for beneath the mask the wounds that had refused to heal for
thirteen years were gone. That side of his father’s face showed no rot at all
– it was baby-smooth, and in his empty eye socket silvery flames
flickered, as if the surface of Reaper was reflected there.

The guard let go of Maelys and stared at the God-Emperor.
Little Aimee came out from under the table as if there were springs under her
soles and rammed her fist into the throat of Fyllis’s captor. He collapsed,
gasping for air, and Aimee pulled her away. The other guards froze, swords in
the air.

Nish slipped free, slid between Maelys and her guard, and
held up his bloody blade. ‘If you want her, Father, you’ll have to kill me
first.’

Jal-Nish shakily climbed to his feet, and Nish could see how
the father who still cared, in his own twisted way, for his one remaining child
was struggling with the monster who had been obsessed with power for so long
that no depravity was beyond him. Would he give the order?

He almost did; Jal-Nish’s lips framed the awful words,
Kill him!
but he could not speak them.

‘Guards,’ he said softly, ‘Take the girls and kill them.’

The Imperial Guardsmen shook their heads and backed away.
They had sworn allegiance to the God-Emperor, but clearly that oath did not
include this flame-eyed version of him.

‘Then I’ll do it myself,’ said Jal-Nish, reaching for
Reaper.

There was nothing Nish could do this time; nothing anyone
could do.

‘Leave my sister alone, you nasty man,’ cried Fyllis,
raising her right hand.

Jal-Nish spun around, staring at the blonde-haired child, so
thin and pale, yet so determined. Her little chin was pointed and her oddly
blank eyes met his unflinchingly. His arm quivered, his fingers twitched, but
he could not move his hand down the fraction of an ell required to touch the
yearning surface of Reaper. Incredibly, the gift Fyllis had used to protect her
family from the scriers, by preventing the wisp-watchers and loop-listeners
from talking to the tears, had blocked the God-Emperor from using Reaper.

‘Klarm,’ Jal-Nish said over his shoulder. ‘Take her down.’

‘I don’t harm children,’ said Klarm, picking up the
knoblaggie.

The flame in Jal-Nish’s eye flared. ‘Just months ago, you
swore a sacred oath to me, dwarf.’

‘I swore to the man you used to be,’ said Klarm, ‘because
Santhenar was in peril and you were the only man with the strength to stop it
– or so I thought.’ He glanced at Nish, thoughtfully. ‘But that peril is
gone now, and I did not swear to the power-crazed monster you’ve become.’

‘No one breaks their oath to me,’ grated Jal-Nish. ‘Especially
not the only man I’ve ever trusted with the tears.’ He punched his fist into
Reaper and a silver flash lanced towards the dwarf, who threw himself backwards
over the edge of the pit.

‘You’ll keep,’ said Jal-Nish after a long pause. ‘All of
you.’ He dropped his hand onto Gatherer, then both he and the tears faded and
disappeared.

After a considerable hesitation, the allies went to the edge
of the pit and looked over. An uncanny flame was slowly spreading across the
corroded stone of Morrelune again, though this time it had the same silvery
shimmer as Nish had seen in his father’s empty eye socket.

‘We’ve got to find out what he’s up to,’ said Flydd
that night. ‘And I can only think of one way to do so.’

The allies, except for Ryll, had gathered on the rim of the
pit, near where they’d had the banquet and, save for Maelys, were looking down
at the rising and falling lights of Morrelune. Maelys had not joined them; she
was sitting on a rock, well to one side, gazing up at the mountains.

She could only think of home and family now: her poor mother
weeping in that terrible cell until she died of grief; her beloved father,
Rudigo, seized years ago and tortured, though it had taken him months to die;
and crusty old Aunt Bugi, who had held out almost to the end.

The memory of cranky Aunt Haga, whom Maelys had always
thought hated her, slapping down the God-Emperor with a fish pilfered from his
Sacred Lake brought a smile to her lips, but when she thought of her little
sister it faded again.

What kind of a monster imprisoned a child in that stinking
hell-hole, and how had she survived it? Maelys suspected that Haga, Bugi and
Lyma had starved themselves so Fyllis would have enough to eat.

And her sweet, simple little sister, who had always been
frail and who would not step on an ant, had saved Maelys’s life. Fyllis’s blind
loyalty brought tears to Maelys’s eyes. Where had she found the courage to stab
the mighty God-Emperor, and how had she managed to deny him the use of Reaper
at the most critical time?

It had been too much for her. Fyllis had collapsed the
moment Jal-Nish disappeared, and she was now back in the healer’s tent with
Haga watching over her anxiously. Maelys wished she was there too.

She shook her head, slowly realising what Flydd was talking
about.

‘You want to go back into Morrelune?’ cried Nish.

‘No, I don’t,’ said Flydd. ‘But we’ve got to get into
Jal-Nish’s mind while he’s using the tears, to see how close he is to mastering
them. Once he succeeds it will be too late.’

‘Of all the dangerous things you’ve done –’ began
Nish.

‘No,
I can’t do
it. That would be far too perilous for all of us.’

‘Then who?’ said Nish.

‘Only one person has seen into his mind since he’s had the
tears,’ said Flydd.

‘Who?’ said Nish, frowning.

‘No!’ cried Yggur. ‘This time you’re going too far, Flydd. I
can’t allow it.’

Maelys leaned back against the rock and closed her eyes. She
couldn’t care less what they were plotting. She’d done her bit, and now that
she had her family back, all she wanted was to go home; to make a home for
them, and for the baby.

‘You must,’ said Flydd. ‘Indeed, Yggur, you’re the only one
who can make it happen – if you’ve got any power left.’

‘It’s on its last gasp,’ said Yggur. ‘I already told you
that.’

‘All the more reason to get on with it. Maelys, come here,
please.’

She stood up, her mind still on Fyllis, and Nifferlin.
‘Yes?’

‘You’re the only person to ever see into Jal-Nish’s mind
–’ said Flydd.

‘What?’ The memories came back so sluggishly that for half a
minute Maelys did not realise what he was on about. ‘Oh yes, it was when Nish
and I went down to the Pit of Possibilities, months ago. My taphloid woke for a
moment and I saw Jal-Nish using the tears. He was gloating that he would soon
master them, and would then be invulnerable for all time …’ Realising that
everyone was staring at her, she said, ‘No! Definitely not. Don’t even imagine
–’

‘No one else can do it. You must get back into his mind and
see how close he is, so we can find a way to stop him.’

‘I couldn’t do it again if I wanted to,’ said Maelys. ‘It
happened by itself. I didn’t plan it.’

‘The taphloid was the critical factor,’ said Flydd. ‘And it
was originally Yggur’s. Therefore, if anyone can make it duplicate what it did
in the Pit of Possibilities, he can.’

 
FIFTY-TWO

The tent had been set up on the narrow strip of paving
between the curving edge of the pit of Morrelune and the oval sweep of the
Sacred Lake, and Maelys was sitting cross-legged on a folded blanket, on the
floor. The hour was late and it was almost pitch-dark inside the tent –
to see with the taphloid she had to block out her natural sight completely.

It did not block her other senses, though – Maelys
could hear waves lapping against the stone edge of the lake, and every so often
a marshy odour drifted across from the fringing reed beds. Once or twice there
came a hissing sound from the pit, or the tumble of a dislodged pebble down its
sides.

She blanked out the sounds and smells and, holding the
taphloid lightly between her clenched hands as Yggur had instructed her, closed
her eyes. All sounds from outside faded, and shortly she made out the distant,
hackle-raising song of the tears.

Almost immediately she envisaged the faint outline of a
tear, though she could not tell which one. They were made of nihilium, she
recalled, the purest substance in the world and one that held the print of the
Art more tightly than anything else could. The tear was floating above a
pedestal that had been rough-sawn from black meteoritic iron; it resembled the
iron from which the caduceus had been made.

Jal-Nish was not looking directly into the tear this time.
From the way the dark background was moving, he must have been walking around
the pedestal, watching it from the corner of his eye.

He was in the topmost level of Morrelune, which was open on
all sides. The ceiling was supported by intersecting circles of slender columns
made from a golden stone polished to waxy smoothness, though unlike the rest of
Morrelune the stone here was hardly stained at all, and only slightly corroded.

The ninth level was still a beautiful, sparsely furnished
space, but thickly coated in dust now and with hairline cracks running across
the ceiling. A large brown stain marred the floor beneath a hook mounted in the
ceiling, where Jal-Nish’s decaying body had been hung up by his toes.

‘I thought I understood the tears,’ he mused as he walked.
‘Once they would do exactly as I ordered, but since Klarm has held them they’ve
become capricious. Is that because I allowed him to use them – or can it
be the wilful nature of the tears themselves? Or can they only have one
master?’

He made several more circuits, the good hand and the
replaced one clasped behind his back.

‘Thirteen years I’ve spent prying into their secrets,’ he
murmured, ‘and yet, full understanding still eludes me. I’ve got to know how
they were formed from the destruction of the node at Snizort, but only two
people ever knew. One is dead and the other, Flydd, will never tell me.’

Jal-Nish paced between the columns agitatedly. Across and
back, as if trying to steel himself for something he’d never had the courage to
do. Abruptly he turned, strode to a blue curtain and wrenched it aside.

Dust sifted to the floor and Maelys saw a rectangular
coffin, made from crystal as clear as glass, standing on its end. Inside was
the naked body of a beautiful, tall and curvaceous woman; she had eyes of the
most brilliant blue and hair as yellow as corn. Had it not been for the thin
line running around her throat she might have been asleep.

It was Irisis, and not only had she been beautiful, clever,
brave and loyal, she had also sacrificed her life to try to save Nish. No
wonder he had loved her so much; maybe he still did. How can I compete with
that? Maelys half-rose, embarrassed and wondering where that thought had come
from. She had been over her infatuation with Nish for months; she still cared
for him, but only as a friend. Definitely no more than that.

‘Dare I commit the ultimate, forbidden crime?’ Jal-Nish was
saying when she sat down again. ‘Irisis was with Flydd in Snizort when the
tears were created. Can I raise her from the dead long enough to rip the secret
from her lying tongue?’

He began to pace again, back and forth, back and forth.

Maelys couldn’t bear to watch him any longer. With a
shudder, she dropped the taphloid onto the floor, and instantly she was back in
the tent by the lake.

‘Flydd?’ she said softly.

He drew the tent flap open and she made out Yggur behind
him, moving painfully because of his many half-healed burns. Nish was further
back, pacing as anxiously as his father. She went out into the starlight.

‘The tears are acting oddly and Jal-Nish can’t work out
why,’ said Maelys to Flydd. ‘He believes something strange happened when they
were formed and, since he knows he’ll never get it out of you, he’s planning to
… do the other thing.’

‘What other thing?’ snapped Flydd. ‘Speak plainly, girl! We
don’t have time.’

‘He was looking at Irisis, in the crystal coffin,’ said
Maelys, avoiding Nish’s eye. He made a keening sound and she went on, desperate
to get the words out while she still could. ‘He’s thinking about … about
raising her from the dead so he can question her about the tears.’

Nish choked, stumbled away and she heard him throwing up
over the edge of the pit.

‘What did happen when the tears were formed, Flydd?’ said
Tulitine.

Flydd gestured her near and the others followed. ‘It was a
long time ago, at the battle for Snizort,’ he said quietly, sitting down at the
nearest table and picking up a half-full wine glass abandoned during the
interrupted feast. ‘The lyrinx had excavated a city into the tar pits there.
They put in a node-drainer to prevent us drawing from the
field
of the Snizort node to power our clankers and air-floaters,
and to take that power for themselves.

‘The Council of Scrutators made a device to destroy the
node-drainer, and ordered me to take it into Snizort, but the order was a
disguised death sentence from my enemy, Chief Scrutator Ghorr. He didn’t
believe anyone could get into a city of a hundred thousand lyrinx, and out
again, and to make absolutely sure of me, the device he gave me was
booby-trapped. It was designed for an artisan, not a mancer, and if I had tried
to use it, it would have killed me.’

He gulped the wine and continued. ‘Irisis was an artisan, of
course, so I had her work the device instead. Unfortunately the booby-trap
failed and all the power of the node flowed the wrong way, destroying the node
itself.’

‘But not utterly,’ said Yggur.

‘No – the blast distilled the essence of the node into
two nihilium tears, which Jal-Nish stole, and because he killed his own men to
conceal that he had them, and ever since has used them for debased purposes,
they became the Profane Tears.’