The Fate of the Fallen (The Song of the Tears Book 1) (5 page)

‘She can deceive the wisp-watchers, and even fool the
loop-listeners for a time,’ said Aunt Haga. ‘The God-Emperor believes his
spying devices because he can’t bear to trust his officers. It gives us our
chance.’

‘Do you realise what he would do to Fyllis if he caught
her?’ said Maelys. ‘How can you take such a risk?’

‘Because we’ve nothing left to lose,’ her mother hissed.
‘What do you think her fate will be,
and
yours
, once we’re not here to protect you? That day grows ever closer,
Daughter.’

Maelys looked down at her fingers, which were knotting
themselves in her lap. She’d known it for months, though it had been easier to
hide from the unpleasant truth in her beloved books than face up to the future.
But if someone had to be sacrificed, she knew her duty. It wasn’t going to be
Lyma or the aunts, and it couldn’t be Fyllis. Maelys was strong and if this
were to be her fate, she would have to endure it, though she felt sure she was
going to die horribly, for nothing. No one could outwit the God-Emperor.

‘What am I to do?’ she repeated dully.

‘We’re starting down the mountain tomorrow –’ began
Aunt Haga.

‘Why so soon?’ Maelys liked to put unpleasant things off as
long as possible.

‘We’ve little food and no wood. And if Jal-Nish sends his
son to another prison, far away, or Cryl-Nish dies … it’s got to be now.’

‘Once we get there, we’re taking Fyllis to Mazurhize to see
her father,’ said Lyma. ‘We have permission for that, before he dies.’

‘I’d like to see Father too,’ said Maelys plaintively, ‘for
the last time.’

‘You can’t. You’ll be waiting in the foothills above
Morrelune Palace.’

Aunt Haga added, ‘During the visit Fyllis will wander off
– no one would suspect an eight-year-old girl – and get Cryl-Nish
out of his cell without alerting the wisp-watcher. She’ll lead him up and away
to you.’

‘Then what?’ Maelys was appalled at the risk Fyllis would be
taking. ‘And what happens if something goes wrong?’

‘Don’t worry about us,’ said her mother, as if Maelys’s only
concern could be for them. ‘Fyllis will shelter us until we reach our hiding
place.’

Leaving me to fend for myself, Maelys thought. It didn’t
seem like much of a plan. There had to be more that the sisters weren’t telling
her. ‘Why risk trying to free Nish anyway? Why can’t we all go away together?’

‘To live like peasants in a mud hut, in terror of the
God-Emperor’s whim?’ snapped her mother. ‘You forget where you come from, girl.
Clan Nifferlin cannot bend to this evil man.’ She looked over her shoulder as
she said it. ‘It’s our right and duty to recover everything we’ve lost. We owe
it to our clan Histories.’

Or die trying, Maelys thought. The sisters were obsessed
with the clan’s heritage, and its fall. ‘Where am I supposed to take Nish?
Assuming Fyllis succeeds, I mean?’

‘You’ll lead him up through the rice terraces to Cathim’s
hut. You remember Cathim?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘He’s your third cousin on your father’s side; a great
red-bearded bull of a man,’ said Aunt Bugi.

‘Him!’ Cathim had frightened Maelys when she was little, for
he’d been so loud and hairy, so wild and boisterous, hurling her high and
catching her only at the last second, roaring with laughter all the while. She
couldn’t remember when she’d last seen him.

‘Cathim’s a good man. He knows the secret mountain paths,
and where the hidden wisp-watchers are, too. He’ll take you and Cryl-Nish north
to Hulipont, to Ousther.’

‘Who’s Ousther?’

Again Aunt Bugi looked over her shoulder, and lowered her
voice further. ‘He’s the leader of the Defiance; he’ll help Nish achieve his
destiny and become the Deliverer.’

‘I didn’t know there was a Defiance,’ said Maelys.

Aunt Haga smiled thinly. ‘What if the guards catch us?’ said
Maelys. ‘What if something happens to Cathim? How am I supposed to defend us
against armed soldiers?’

Aunt Haga’s bony fingers caught Maelys’s chain and jerked
the taphloid out from between her breasts. ‘With this, you little fool!’

Maelys reeled. How had she known? ‘How?’ she said weakly.

‘I’ll tell you when you need to know.’

Maelys’s heart was thumping. ‘Why do I have to go with
Cathim, anyhow? I’ll just be in the way.’

‘Because once you’re safe in Hulipont, girl,’ said Aunt
Bugi, ‘you’ll use your feminine wiles to bind Cryl-Nish to our clan, forever.’

‘What do you mean,
bind
him?’ said Maelys. Nothing they said made any sense.

The aunts looked incredulously at Lyma. ‘But surely …?’ said
Aunt Haga.

Lyma shook her head. ‘Maelys …’ She trailed off,
embarrassed.

Haga thrust Lyma out of the way. ‘The tears came at a price,
though it was one the God-Emperor paid willingly, for he had four sons and it
didn’t matter that he could father no more children. Now only Nish survives and
his father wants grandchildren desperately.

‘By binding Nish,’ she said, harsh as an old crow, ‘we mean
getting his baby into your belly. Not even Jal-Nish will touch us once we’re
his only family. Indeed, he’ll raise us higher than Nifferlin has ever been.
And it’s all up to you, girl.’

‘If you fail in your duty, we’re dead,’ Aunt Bugi added,
unnecessarily. ‘And you won’t have long to do it, for we’ll have to leave our
new hiding place at the end of winter.’

Horrified, Maelys put her hand over her mouth. Not only was
Nish the last surviving son of the God-Emperor, but a mighty hero and an
honourable man. Though she’d loved the stories she’d read about him, he was as
far above her as the stars outreached the sparks in the fireplace. Besides,
using womanly wiles to seduce and trap a man was wicked and deceitful, and her
father had brought her up to be honest. But as her gaze fell upon little Fyllis
– so innocent, so pretty, so vulnerable – Maelys knew she had to do
it no matter how wrong it felt.

‘What if he doesn’t like me?’ she said plaintively. ‘He’s a
man, isn’t he?’ said her mother. ‘One who hasn’t been with a woman in ten
years. And you can be … attractive enough, when you make the effort.’

‘Well, I dare say she could be
made
presentable,’ said Aunt Haga, prune-mouthed. ‘For those who
like that sort.’

‘After ten years in Mazurhize, a camel would look beautiful
to Nish,’ Aunt Bugi said spitefully. ‘You do understand the feminine arts,
don’t you, Maelys?’

‘I don’t recall Mother explaining those to me either,’
snapped Maelys, embarrassed. She knew about the physical act of mating, of
course – no one could grow up on an estate, learning the care and
husbandry of animals, without doing so. But of the arts between a man and a
woman, of flirting, charming and seducing, she was painfully ignorant.

‘Oh, for goodness sake,’ said Aunt Haga, scowling at Lyma.
‘Come here, girl. And pay attention. I’m only going to say this once.’

THREE

Nish felt sure he was going mad. Weeks had gone by
since the confrontation with Jal-Nish, but the same thoughts kept cycling
endlessly through his mind and he could not get rid of them. How could he have
been such a fool as to attack his father; and why, after all his planning and
preparation, had he allowed Jal-Nish to get the better of him so easily? Why
hadn’t he gone for the tears? Most alarming of all, where had that ungovernable
rage come from? Perhaps he was more like his father than he’d thought.

Closing his eyes, he tried to will himself to sleep, to
forget for a few brief hours, though sleep inevitably led to a single dream
– beautiful Irisis, perfectly preserved by his father’s sorcerous Arts in
that crystalline coffin. From his first waking moment each day Nish longed to
see her again, even in death, though the moment she appeared in his dreams he
could focus only on the thin red line around her throat. There was nothing so lovely
that Jal-Nish could not corrupt it, or use it to torment his recalcitrant son. Jal-Nish
was right – how could the dead have a destiny? She was gone and he had to
get over her.

He could still feel echoes of the pain Reaper had inflicted
on him, yet Reaper had barely touched him. Nish moaned and began to rock back
and forth in the straw. The brief taste of freedom had only thrown his
degradation into sharper focus. Every man had a weakness and Jal-Nish had found
Nish’s. During the war he’d shown courage in the face of impossible odds; he’d
endured pain and privations that would have broken many a man, but he couldn’t
face the numbing nothingness of prison any longer. When strength was most
needed, he’d lost it.

What if he were to batter at the door until the guard came,
then beg to be taken to his father again? If it would have done any good Nish
would have done so, but Jal-Nish had sentenced him to ten more years and he
never went back on his word. Besides, the choice his father offered would be
just the same. He was trapped.

The rage surged again; once more Nish gave way to it, and to
dreams of violent, bloody revenge, but this time the urge to smash and destroy
built up until it became uncontrollable. Had Jal-Nish walked into the cell at
that moment, Nish would have torn him apart and laughed while he did it; he
could not have stopped himself.

Once the rage had worn itself out, leaving him gasping in
the stinking straw, the realisation sickened him. No matter what he’d done,
Jal-Nish was still his father and he must not harm him. Besides, he couldn’t be
beaten, and if Nish kept trying, it was going to drive him insane. There was no
choice but to repudiate his ringing promise to the world, even though it meant
betraying Irisis’s memory.

He fell back in the stinking straw, overcome by despair.

Someone passed by in the dark, though it wasn’t one of
the heavy-booted guards. Nish’s ears, sharpened by isolation, picked up the
rustle of soft cloth, the pad of small feet. He caught a whiff of soap, a kind
he hadn’t smelt since he’d been sent away from home as a boy, and he almost
choked at the memories it produced.

The footsteps turned back. Something slipped through the
bars, hit the floor with the tiniest
tkkk
and the visitor had passed by. Trick or trap? Nish didn’t move until his world
settled back into its stony silence. He could barely make the object out. It
was like a pale straw, or a rushlight, but why would anyone toss a rushlight
into his cell?

He was permitted light for a few specified hours a day, to
read such instructional books as were deemed suitable – his father didn’t
want Nish turning into a vegetable – but evening was lights-out and he’d
be flogged if the snoop-sniffer caught him burning a rushlight.

He picked it up, and could vaguely make out writing along
it, though it was too dark to read the words. It didn’t feel like a trap,
though. He checked that no watcher was observing him directly, made a careful
spark with his flint striker to light his stub of rush from earlier, and
examined the writing.

I’m coming for you at
the tenth hour. Be ready.

The guard had changed a while ago so it was after six in the
evening. Nish scraped the writing off and ate the crumbs, crushing the brief
hope as he extinguished the light. It had to be a trap. His father was a
sadistic monster who, in the early days of his reign, had allowed rebellions to
fester and grow so he could have the pleasure of grinding people’s hopes into
the dust. He wanted Nish to dream of escape, then exact a devastating
punishment.

Or did he just want to raise the hope and let it come to
nothing? There was no end to his malice. Damn him, Nish thought. I won’t react
in any way. I won’t even think about escape.
I won’t!

But he couldn’t stop himself.

The minutes dragged as they’d never done before. Nish
could tell the time from the sound the wisp-watcher emitted: a chilling,
low-pitched whine every six minutes as it rotated to scan the stairs, then
turned back to the corridor. The meandering snoop-sniffer dragged along the
ceiling with a slippery slither, but the loop-listener at the other end of the
corridor hung from its stand as silently as a corpse.

The tenth hour finally came; nothing happened. Nish felt an
urge to pace his cell, but stayed where he was in case watcher or listener
detected the movement and became suspicious. He closed his eyes and lay back on
the straw, cursing himself for falling prey to hope.

Then it came again – that soft footfall and a waft of
fine soap. Nish held his breath. Could it really be happening? Of course not.
Yet if it
were
his father, something
did not ring true. He searched his memories and eventually it struck him. It
was the soap – children’s soap, the kind that did not sting the eyes
– and only wealthy people could afford it. What was such a child doing in
Mazurhize?

The oiled lock turned smoothly, the door opened and someone
small slipped through. It was a child, a slender, pretty blonde girl of eight
or nine; he could tell that much by the pallid green glow emanating from the
distant loop-listener. She came across, innocence itself, and held out her hand
to him.

‘Will you come, Cryl-Nish?’ she said softly, though not so
softly that the loop-listener wouldn’t hear.

Terror clutched at his heart – for her. What reckless
fool had sent her on this hellish errand? Jal-Nish wouldn’t hesitate to torment
a child, or even kill one, and the prettier and more innocent she was, the more
pleasure he would take in it. Since his maiming he’d developed a particular
loathing for beauty and revelled in his power to destroy it.

Nish could feel a moan rising in his throat, but choked it
back. ‘Please go,’ he whispered, using a low, breathy tone that the
loop-listener wouldn’t pick up from a distance. ‘I don’t want you to come to
any harm.’