The Fate of the Fallen (The Song of the Tears Book 1) (30 page)

‘I acted rashly, it’s true. I was too focussed on the
ultimate goal. But Cryl-Nish,’ Monkshart leaned forwards and the light swelled
until his eyes were ablaze, ‘you can only triumph by being as ruthless and
iron-hard as your father. Can’t you see that?’

‘So to beat his father,’ said Maelys, ‘Nish has to become
him? Then what’s the point?’

Monkshart ignored her. ‘You’re not your father, Cryl-Nish,
and never will be. Nonetheless, the people of Santhenar have been led by
ruthless leaders since the Council of Scrutators was formed a century and more
ago. It’s all they know; all they can respect. You can be just as ruthless as
your father. Indeed, you must, for there is no other way now. You must drive
all the way to victory.’

‘Or ruin,’ said Nish bitterly.

‘Or ruin,’ echoed Monkshart. ‘It’s a hard road and we may
well fail, though with faith, belief and determination –’

Nish was thoroughly sick of Monkshart’s exhortations. He
always spoke as if he were trying to sway a mob. The zealot genuinely wanted to
overthrow the God-Emperor, but what did he intend to put in his place? ‘I won’t
do it.’

Monkshart leaned back in his chair, staring at Nish, then
crossed his arms. ‘You will.’

‘You can’t force me. I’m the Deliverer, remember – the
one who made the promise.’

‘Your willing cooperation will certainly make things easier,
for the people will listen to you and your oratory can inspire them. But if you
force me, Cryl-Nish, I have Arts of illusion and coercion that can make you
walk and talk, yet leave your mind a blank.’

‘I don’t believe you,’ said Nish. ‘I know plenty about the
Secret Art.’

‘As it used to be, before the tears, perhaps,’ Monkshart
said, smiling blandly. ‘And some Arts were more secret than others. My master
taught me things about coercion that you can’t even imagine.’

‘I don’t believe that any such Art can make me a credible
Deliverer if I refuse to do it.’

‘It will be difficult, certainly.’ Monkshart rubbed his
square chin. ‘On the other hand, the people desperately want to believe in you,
Cryl-Nish, and when I tell them how cruelly you’ve suffered at the hands of
your father, and how he damaged you, I’m sure they’ll make allowances for your
incapacity.’

‘You may turn me into a puppet, but I’ll be fighting you all
the way, and sooner or later I’ll tear you down and feed you to the mob.’ If
only Nish could believe it himself, but he knew it was the hollowest of boasts.

Monkshart’s fingers clenched and his eyes flashed, but this
time he controlled himself, steepled his fingers under his chin and closed his
eyes, remaining that way for several minutes. Then his eyes sprang open.

‘Very well, I’ll put that alternative aside for an
emergency. Besides, I’d much rather you served me willingly.’ He gave Nish a
chilling smile.

‘I won’t.’

‘Not under any circumstances?’

‘None that I can think of.’

Monkshart’s eyes roved around the pavilion, though Nish got
the impression that it was just a gesture designed to draw out the tension
between them. ‘Not even to protect Maelys?’ said the zealot softly.

Nish started. From the corner of his eye he saw her knuckles
whitening on the arm of the chair. ‘I –’

‘Unless you serve me willingly,’ Monkshart rode over the top
of him, enunciating each word with care, ‘I will give her up to Seneschal
Vomix.’

Maelys let out a muffled cry, then straightened her back and
lifted her chin. ‘Don’t do it, Nish,’ she said, her voice fluttering. ‘If it’s
my doom to be given to Vomix, I must be strong and suffer it. I ask only one
thing of you. That whether you overthrow your father, or whether you go back to
him, you do everything in your power to save my little sister.’

Nish turned an anguished face to Maelys. ‘I can’t let you
–’

‘You must, Nish.’

‘I’ll give you the night to think about it,’ said Monkshart,
‘but in the morning I will have an answer, one way or the other. Phrune!’ he
called, ‘take them to their chambers and set the guards at the top of the path
again.’

Nish sat in his chamber in the dark. Jil had come with
his dinner earlier but he’d waved it away without a glance. He couldn’t have
swallowed it anyway, for there was a lump in his belly the size of a brick.

This time there was no honourable alternative. If he agreed
to work with Monkshart he would be betraying everything he stood for, and he
could only imagine the contempt Irisis would have felt for such a spineless
capitulation. But if he refused, he would be betraying his only friend, who had
given her all for him, to say nothing of his promise to Irisis and the world.
He was trapped either way and he couldn’t bear it any longer.

Besides, taking on the mantle of the Deliverer was pointless
now that the other Defiance outposts had been destroyed. The struggle was
hopeless; his father could never be beaten and it was futile to try. Even if,
by some miracle, he could escape from here to fight again, he’d lost the will
for it. After ten years of self-analysis Nish knew his own character
intimately, but he couldn’t do anything about his biggest failing, despair.

That left only one way out, the coward’s way, and he
despised himself for taking it, but he couldn’t summon the strength to fight
on.

 
TWENTY-TWO

Hours had gone by. After Phrune finally padded down the
corridor, extinguishing the lanterns, Nish went to his door. It wasn’t locked.
He watched until the dull fan of light from beneath the acolyte’s door was
extinguished, waited a few more minutes, just in case, then returned to the
pavilion. All was dark there too, save for the faint radiance from the depths
of the crater.

He stood on the brink for a while, looking down and thinking
about all that might have been, then took a step onto the glassy plank that
stretched out over the abyss. The plank was a couple of spans long, but after
his second step he could feel it bending. If he went much further he would
slide off, and he didn’t want his demise to be by default. It had to be a
conscious, deliberate choice.

Besides, the plank was Monkshart’s instrument of execution
and it didn’t feel right that he, Nish, should escape from his troubles that
way. Going back into the pavilion, he stood at the far corner, looking up. A
guard was just visible at the top of the crater.

Nish turned to the path that ran from the other side of the
pavilion down into the depths of the crater. The dark was thicker here and he
could barely make out the glassy rock beneath his feet. He went down slowly,
trailing his right hand along the wall and feeling with each foot before
lowering his weight onto it. Ironic, the lengths to which he was going to stay
alive, so he could kill himself further down.

As his eyes adjusted, he began to see
into
the vitreous surfaces of the pit, which in daylight had
exhibited such ever-changing, shimmering colours and patterns. Something moved
there now – images just beyond the boundary of recognition, like
straining to remember dreams after waking.

They worked powerfully on his psyche, though. At one point
he found himself moved to such melancholy that tears pricked in his eyes, while
another shadow-image spoke to him of all those great and glorious creations
– priceless art, poems of the most exquisite sensibility, the Great Tales
– lost forever during the reign of his father.

Shaking his head, Nish continued and, not far below, made
out a smooth bulge protruding over the abyss like a glassy tonsil. Was that
where the young messenger had met his end? It seemed probable. He made his
cautious way to it, stepping extra carefully as he moved out onto the bulge,
but the mess made by the impact had been cleaned away.

He sat on the broadest part of the overhang, which seemed a
fitting place for him to meet his end, and to atone for the murder done in his
name. Far below lay the still-fuming core of the destroyed node – its
dead heart. What perversion of reality had the destruction of the node created
here? He would never know.

There was no point putting it off, for the longer he
postponed his end the harder it would be to act. Nish rose suddenly, took a
deep breath then bent his knees to spring. As his feet left the floor,
something jerked him away from the edge and he landed flat on his back on the
bulge, hard enough to knock the wind out of him. The moment he got his breath
back, Nish tried to throw himself forwards.

‘Stop!’ said Monkshart, and with three fingers of his other
hand he tapped Nish across the forehead.

Nish was overcome by a dreamy lassitude and couldn’t think
what he was doing here, or what had seemed so urgent and final. It only lasted
a few seconds but, when it passed, so had the urge to hurl himself into the
pit.

He sat up, rubbing his throat, which felt bruised. ‘How
– how did you know I was here?’

‘Sensing a self-destructive urge in you, I set Phrune to
keep a covert watch.’ Monkshart put a hand under Nish’s elbow and easily lifted
him to his feet, turning him away from the brink. ‘Come with me.’

‘Where?’ said Nish numbly.

‘Down to the dead heart. I do understand what you must be
going through, Cryl-Nish, but that way is not and can never be the answer to
your troubles.’

‘There
is
no
answer, save that life is an empty, futile torment.’

‘There is
always
an answer, but first you must ask the right question. The dead heart of the
node is the place to ask such questions, for it contains all possibilities and
all things become clear there.’

With that cryptic statement Monkshart unshuttered a lantern
and held it up in his free hand. Nish allowed the zealot to lead him down the
path and asked no more questions, for he felt oddly empty of curiosity, or
interest. What was to be would be.

The base of the crater was knobbed and speckled with glassy
lumps, many of which had shattered to litter the floor with curved shards that
crunched underfoot. Every sound was drawn out to extended echoes.

‘Careful here, Cryl-Nish. The rock-glass floor is full of
bubbles and the larger ones won’t support your weight.’

It was hard to make out what Monkshart was saying through
the echoes. He waved the lantern around. The floor ahead looked like froth set
solid, though most of the larger bubbles, the size of melons, had collapsed,
and the edge of one was blotched with unpleasant rusty stains.

Nish trod carefully after Monkshart, who was weaving his way
towards a sump in the floor, about a span across, with walls of wavy, flowing,
solidified glass. The glow he’d seen from above came from it. A wooden beam had
been laid across the sump and a rope ladder was tied to the beam. Nish looked
in but could not make out the bottom.

‘Down there?’

Monkshart nodded stiffly. He looked tense now. ‘If you would
go first.’

Nish took hold of the top rung of the ladder and swung
himself down. He should have been anxious, especially with the zealot above
him, but he felt nothing. He climbed down slowly, trying to avoid looking at
the increasingly tortured walls, which resembled a mural made of war victims.
It was only five or six spans to the bottom, but by the time he reached it Nish
felt as though he’d passed through a gate into another world.

The collapsed dead heart of the former node had the form of
a cluster of gigantic bubbles blown into the glassy rock, though their thin
inner walls had collapsed to a litter of shards. Even to Nish’s deadened gaze,
the place had an air of unreality. Layers of grey powder lay in an inward
spiral centred on a murky hole – more correctly, an emptiness – in
the floor. The powder might have been a form of the quick-dust which Irisis had
once told him about – at any rate, his foot went straight through it
– and a greenish miasma drifted above the emptiness.

Dark oozes seeped from cracks in the walls, like tar, though
each had a mirror-shiny surface. Wisps and phantoms drifted up from the
emptiness – fragments of alternative realities, perhaps, each struggling
to come to fruition like starving beasts fighting over a corpse. The dead heart
had an eerie feel, but there was something else about it, something he hadn’t
felt in a very long time, though it took a while to work out exactly what it
was.

He felt lighter here, less burdened, as though a weight had
been lifted from his shoulders. No, not a weight, an
influence
. This place was completely free of the tears’ influence.
Not a skerrick of his father’s Art could reach him here.

But as if to deny that comfort the moment he’d realised it,
something began to seep into the edge of his consciousness, like an image
which, no matter how quickly he turned his head, always remained just beyond
the edge of sight. He tried to blink it away, thinking that it was his father
after all, but it wouldn’t go.

Nish sat down on the most solid and shard-free piece of floor,
half expecting to float up again, and shook his head. The image faded but was
replaced by another, clearer this time, of a small band of people walking
through an icy wasteland towards a distant tower. It faded too, but his
curiosity had returned.

He looked up through the hole. ‘What is this place,
Monkshart? You said all the nodes were destroyed.’

‘They were,’ said Monkshart, peering down at him, ‘but as I
told you,
Nothing goes to nothing
. No
object or force can ever be completely destroyed – it can only be
transformed into something else, and the Tifferfyte node was transformed into
this place, which I call the Pit of Possibilities.’

‘But it’s not a place of power?’

‘Not if you mean uncanny power, nor indeed any force that
can be used to strike against the enemy. The Pit offers nothing but visions of
possible futures.’