The Fate of the Fallen (The Song of the Tears Book 1) (20 page)

And he had to learn to look outside himself. He was deeply
in Maelys’s debt. He owed her his life and the chance to live again. He had to
make it up to her.

Apologising wasn’t going to be easy and Nish didn’t want to
do it, for he was a proud man who found it hard to admit his failings. Never
admit a weakness. That had been another of his father’s harsh childhood
lessons. Why me? he kept thinking as he headed back, and had to remind himself
again – so soon – to get out of his self-absorption. He rehearsed
various forms of apology as he stumbled through the dark, but finally decided
on the simplest, ‘I’m really sorry’.

Approaching the camp site, he hesitated outside the circle
of firelight. Rurr-shyve was still sleeping, assuming that what it did at such
times was sleep. Who could tell? Surely only his father could see into the mind
of the alien beasts.

Maelys was sitting well back from the fire, in the shadow
cast by the discs of Rurr-shyve’s tail. Her arms were wrapped around her chest
and she was rocking back and forth, humming softly and staring at the scrubby
grass between her bare feet. She looked as though she’d been crying.

Something rustled to his left and she looked up eagerly.
Nish hadn’t noticed it before, but with that pitch-coloured hair and pale skin,
and the lush but compact figure, she reminded him of the girls from his
homeland in distant chilly Einunar.

Nish felt a sudden pang of nostalgia for home and family.
Because of the war, he’d been sent away from home at the age of sixteen to
become a prentice artificer in one of the newfangled clanker manufactories. He
hadn’t seen his mother, his sister or brothers, or Einunar since his eighteenth
birthday. Now his siblings were gone and he had no idea how to find his mother.
He felt utterly alone. Maelys was the only person who’d cared about him and,
despite her folly, he’d treated her shabbily.

She looked around, uncomfortably, as if aware that she was
being watched. Nish didn’t want her to think that he was spying on her. He
probed with one foot until he encountered a dry stick and stepped firmly on it.
She jumped at the sound and he went forwards, making plenty of noise, so he
wouldn’t frighten her.

She turned to face him, her knees together modestly as if
she were wearing a skirt rather than pants, and gave a little smile, so
tentative yet so full of yearning. He paused in mid-stride, for it lit up her
face, turned her from being an attractive girl to a beautiful one, and suddenly
it struck him.

Nish wasn’t one of those men who thought every woman who
smiled at him desired him. In his youth he’d discovered, cruelly, that they did
not, though by the end of the war he’d learned to read men and women. The look
in Maelys’s eyes was unmistakable. She didn’t know she was giving herself away,
but it was as clear as daylight to Nish.

She was developing a romantic fondness for him (he shied
away from the word love, which he couldn’t even bear to think about). But any
kind of romantic yearning was unbearable to him now.

He did like Maelys, who was warm-hearted, generous and
brave, and he was truly grateful that she’d done so much for him.
But she wasn’t Irisis
, the love of his
life, his obsession ever since her death, and the only woman he wanted. He
couldn’t even think of Maelys – so little, quiet and shy, the very
opposite of Irisis – in that way.

As he stepped into the firelight, she rose to her feet and
her face lit up. ‘Nish,’ she began, ‘I was so worried –’

There could be no future for the two of them, so it was
better to crush her feelings right away, even if it made her hate him. It would
be simpler if she did.

‘I deeply regret what I said earlier,’ he said formally but
without a trace of warmth, ‘or at least, the way I said it. You tried to
manipulate me and it went terribly wrong, but I should have been more
measured.’ He couldn’t address the other issue, though: his broken promise. ‘I
must also thank you for all you’ve done for me,’ he went on in clipped tones,
and saw the light fade from her eyes. ‘I will never forget it. But don’t think
that I feel anything more for you than gratitude. I never will, for I am in
love with a beautiful woman before whose memory all other women pale to
insignificance.’ He glanced around awkwardly. ‘Get your gear ready. We’re
going.’

He regretted the words the instant they’d left his mouth; it
was clear that he could not have wounded her more cruelly if he’d spent a year
planning it. She flushed, then drew herself up to her meagre height and said
with trembling pride, ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about. I’ll be ready
in two minutes,’ then whirled and fled into the bushes between the pinnacles.

He heard her retching as if she were bringing up her heart,
but shortly she staggered out again, wiping her mouth on a tuft of grass, and
began stuffing the camp gear into her pack.

Long before Nish was ready she was standing by the
flap-peter, avoiding his gaze. He couldn’t look at her either, so he shook
Rurr-shyve from its slumber and unfastened its tethers. By the time he’d
finished, Maelys had packed his gear and swung herself up into the front
saddle.

He climbed into the rear one, which took every ounce of his
strength, and slumped backwards, keeping as far away from her as he could. She
took hold of the amulet, her back rigidly erect, put her wrist through the
wisp-controller and urged the beast into the air.

Nish fastened the safety line around his waist and closed
his eyes. It was as if he’d kicked the faithful dog that had saved him from
drowning.

THIRTEEN

Maelys couldn’t speak for an hour or two – it
hurt too much – but after that she remembered her duty and forced herself
to put her feelings to one side. What mattered was her family, especially
Fyllis, and Maelys would make any sacrifice to ensure their safety.

She tried to understand why Nish had acted so meanly. Had
the years of confinement brought out his true character, or had it broken him?
The latter, she told herself, for Maelys could not allow herself to believe
she’d been so wrong about him.

Yes, he must be a broken man and, before he’d learned how to
deal with his sudden freedom, she’d pressured him to become the Deliverer. It
had been too much. How could she have been so arrogant?

The flappeter darted left, into a cloud. It was nearly dawn
now and she was exhausted, but she still had to find a safe hideout, and soon.
The God-Emperor’s minions must have been on their trail for ages.

As she went over the events of the evening, Maelys realised
that Nish had been right. Five people had died because of her stupidity; the
community of Byre had been destroyed and the villagers would be hunted down and
punished. If she hadn’t gone there, Byre might have continued unchanged for
another hundred years.

And yet, that hurt less than Nish’s rejection. She wiped her
eyes, allowed Rurr-shyve its head and they fled into the dark.

Rurr-shyve was flying slowly down a winding, forested
valley while Maelys looked for a safe place to land, for the sun was up
already. As they passed over the crest of a hill she saw a large village spread
out across the curve of the river, straight ahead. She wasn’t going to go anywhere
near this one.

‘Turn away, Rurr-shyve.’

Rurr-shyve kept going. Since the rescue, the balance of
power had shifted. The flappeter never refused an order but it took longer to
obey, and went out of its way to make things uncomfortable for her. And once
they camped, whenever she turned her back she could feel its compound eyes
boring into her, their malice and their hunger. One day …

‘Turn away!’ she shouted, afraid of being seen.

The flappeter curved across the village square before
banking right. People cried out and pointed, and a wisp-watcher rotated to
watch which way they went.

Rurr-shyve snorted though its breathing tubes, and after
another half league turned back to the river. ‘Fly on,’ Maelys snapped. ‘We
can’t stop here.’

Rurr-shyve is thirsty
.
It put its head down, landed on a high, grassy bank, folded its paired legs and
slid down. Before Maelys realised what it was up to it plunged deep into the
river.

The water was so cold that it took her breath away, and she
couldn’t swim. She tried to push to the surface but her left foot was caught in
the stirrup. She could feel her chest tightening, her air running out, and the
urge to thrash wildly was uncontrollable. Nish gripped her shoulder hard and
she managed to resist her panic.

She was just easing her foot free when Rurr-shyve sucked in
a bellyful, snapped its legs upright and burst through the surface in a deluge
of water. It then sauntered – there was no other word for it –
downstream to a point where the bank was low and walked out.

Maelys slid off, dripping.
Rurr-shyve is hungry
. It swung its head around and up to her,
nuzzling her chest with its hard mouth.

She sprang backwards, wiping clots of slimy brown drool off
her coat.

Juicy eating there.

‘You can’t eat your rider!’ she cried. ‘It’d hurt you too
much.’

Rurr-shyve shook with what she interpreted as laughter.
You don’t understand anything, little one.
If I eat you, it won’t hurt me at all. There’s no
loss
, you see
. It began to crop the lush grass and tall rushes.

She didn’t say anything. Rurr-shyve was testing her. Maelys
had to find a way to reassert her mastery, though she couldn’t think of one.

The following evening she was looking for a camp site
when, without warning, she began to hallucinate that she was flying around the
ceiling of one of the God-Emperor’s torture chambers, looking down at
bloodstained instruments and brutalised bodies. Rurr-shyve swerved wildly and
the hallucination was gone.

‘What’s the matter?’ yelled Nish.

‘Must have dozed off,’ she muttered, thinking that it had
been caused by lack of sleep, and headed for the nearest landing place, a
windswept island in a frozen lake.

After dinner she went directly to her blankets and slept,
but soon found herself in a different nightmare. A vast parade ground, like the
one between Mazurhize and Morrelune, was carpeted with thousands of people, all
lying on their faces clad in nothing but loin rags. The masked God-Emperor was
stalking back and forth on their backs, flogging indiscriminately with a stiff
right arm.

She must have cried out and woken herself, for Nish was
sitting up in the rider’s sleeping cloak, staring at her in the dim firelight.
Pretending to be half-asleep, she settled down.

The night after that she had a similar nightmare, twice, the
second time so vividly that she woke, bolt upright and running with sweat. She
could still hear the sound of the whip striking flesh, though none of its
victims had made a sound – that wasn’t permitted. There was an unnerving
moaning sound in her ears, though it took several moments before Maelys
realised that it was coming from her own throat.

Nish was on his feet but she couldn’t face him at such a
moment of weakness. She dropped down, pulled her coat over her head and lay
under it, shaking, until his footsteps moved away.

The nightmare she had before dawn was much worse, for it
featured Nish as a strutting popinjay, giggling while he watched people being
tortured and executed. She woke shuddering, but the dream did not fade as her
others always had. It remained perfectly clear and kept repeating all day.

Was she seeing the future? She knew how tempted Nish was,
for she’d heard him crying out in torment when he thought she was asleep,
refusing his father’s offers. What if he succumbed?

She was breathing so heavily that Nish woke and came to her.
She tried to push him away, striking his chest with her fists, but he held her
wrists until she collapsed back into sleep, and she was only vaguely aware of
him kneeling by her, watching over her for what remained of the night.

They flew west then north along the mountain chain
between the highest peaks into a remote, uninhabited land. Maelys didn’t have a
destination in mind, though she was aware that, further north, the mountain
chain broadened and became even more rugged. In that uncharted mass of towering
mountains and hidden valleys they must be able to find a safe hiding place, at
least for the winter.

Nish had barely spoken to her since they’d returned from the
village. He spent his time on the ground exercising furiously, trying to regain
his strength, though when flying he just stared into space, taking no interest
in his surroundings. He hardly slept and seemed to be sinking further into
depression. His promise didn’t seem to mean anything to him now. Nothing did, save
running away. She couldn’t bear to think of him as a coward, but what other
explanation was there?

And yet, though still weak and ill, he had gone down to Byre
to rescue her, so how could he be a coward? Could it all be her fault for
pushing him too hard before he was ready? It must be. His father had broken
Nish and, before the world could hope for deliverance, he had to be put back
together again.

What about her other duty? Despite the rejection, Maelys had
to try again. His feelings for his dead lover were an unhealthy obsession
brought on by ten years of solitary confinement. She had to help him overcome
them, too.

Rurr-shyve turned sharply left, then right as she directed
it through a rocky slot. It was late afternoon and the flap-peter was fighting
a headwind so strong that it hurt her eyes and made her nose drip. Rurr-Shyve’s
rotor-blade injury was healing well but Maelys was afraid the strain would
dislocate it again.

Flying conditions would have been better at a higher
altitude but they had to stay low, winding along each valley, for the cold was
so intense higher up that Nish couldn’t endure it.