The Fate of the Fallen (The Song of the Tears Book 1) (52 page)

‘It’s ironic that you should glory in inflicting pain on
others, yet be so sensitive to it yourself. It’s a weakness, Phrune. You should
practise stoicism, as I do. You’ll be all the stronger for it.’

‘I might not serve you so well, then,’ Phrune said sulkily.

‘Quite, and we can’t have that. Ahh!’ said Monkshart. ‘Hand
me my glove, then stand back. Give me room.’

Phrune fetched the body-glove Monkshart had taken off
earlier and moved out of the way. Monkshart held the taphloid in his left hand,
in several folds of dangling tissue-leather, turning his hand this way and
that. He popped the taphloid open with a covered thumbnail, studied the moon
dial inside, made a pass over it with his other hand, then snapped it closed.

‘Very, very clever,’ said Monkshart.

‘What is it, Master?’ said Phrune.

‘It’s designed to conceal an aura – her aura –
completely.
That’s
why I saw nothing
when she came to Tifferfyte, though I looked on all the planes.’ He shook his
head in wonder, staring at the little device on his palm. ‘I’ve never seen
anything like it. This was made by a master craftsman.’

Maelys, lying under the bed, had a sudden, horrifying
thought. What was concealing her aura now? Was it just the nearness of the
taphloid? If so, and Phrune went out of the room with it, Monkshart would see
her aura at once. She almost choked at the thought. She could feel the blood
roaring through her veins, and surely they must notice that too. She would
never get out of here alive.

‘How does it work?’ said Phrune.

‘By mimicry, I think. By imitating another person who
doesn’t have an aura.’

‘Does the taphloid enhance her
little
talent, then?’ said Phrune.

Monkshart gave a mirthless laugh. ‘Your sneer is misplaced,
Phrune. It’s designed to suppress Maelys’s talent because it’s too strong.’

Maelys started, then almost screamed in panic. Had she made
a sound? Surely a strong talent meant a strong aura, and the taphloid wouldn’t
need to be far away before her aura showed up.

‘
Suppress
it?’
cried Phrune.

‘She would have been given the taphloid to conceal her
talent as soon as it began to appear, and to stunt its development. That saved
her life – no child living so close to Morrelune could have concealed
such a strong gift from Jal-Nish.’

‘But what
is
her
talent?’

‘I don’t know. The family talent apparently allows them to
hide from Jal-Nish’s watchers as long as Gatherer itself doesn’t actually know
about them.’

‘We might use such a talent, Master.’

Monkshart recoiled. ‘No! It would be too dangerous to me. I
daren’t risk it. It won’t be easy for her to develop her gift anyway, at her
age. You’ve got to start young with that sort of thing. Put the taphloid away.’

He handed it back. Phrune wrapped it in its tissue-leather
and hung it around his neck.

‘And that’s how she was able to control the flappeter,
untutored,’ Monkshart added. ‘The taphloid must have mimicked the dead rider’s
aura,
around her
, long enough for her
to form a bond with it.’

‘How could it?’ said Phrune. ‘His aura would vanish the
moment he died.’

‘I have no idea,’ said Monkshart, shaking his head. He lay
down and Phrune began to rub the balm on him again.

It must have happened when I imploded the crystal, before I
killed the rider, Maelys thought. Afterwards the rider’s aura around me must
have slowly faded as the taphloid began to work again,
even without its crystal
, and Rurr-shyve became increasingly
recalcitrant. No wonder the creature felt that I’d cheated on the contract.

Phrune’s voice broke the silence. ‘How did the taphloid
become so dangerous?’

‘By passage through the Mistmurk,’ said Monkshart. ‘Objects
carried through portals between worlds are known to change in unpredictable
ways, and the Mistmurk is a minor version of a portal. The Pit of Possibilities
is the antithesis of what existed there before the Tifferfyte node was
destroyed – a negation of the power of the node, perhaps – and it
nullifies all normal powers and forces.’

‘Does that always happen when a node is destroyed?’

‘Ah – that’s the question Jal-Nish most wants
answered.’

‘And what is the answer, Master?’

‘No one knows. Every destroyed node is different. Some are
transformed into nothingness, some into a new and opposing force, and some,
perhaps, into forces which are the antithesis of each other. I don’t think
we’ll ever know – it would take a mancer’s lifetime just to study one
destroyed node.’

‘But you understood the destroyed Tifferfyte node.’

‘Only enough to know why it could reveal the futures. That’s
why I set it up to spy on Jal-Nish. The Pit should have nullified Maelys’s
taphloid too, but the abrupt transition from pit to maze, through the Mistmurk,
has changed it. It’s made the taphloid greater, but more dangerous.’

So that’s why she’d seen Jal-Nish using the tears – in
the Pit the taphloid had been prevented from suppressing her talent and,
because the place had been set up for Monkshart to spy on Jal-Nish, her talent
must have shone out and caught that fleeting glimpse of Gatherer.

‘And Maelys?’ Phrune’s voice had a deadly edge. ‘What did
she see in the Pit, I wonder, with her special talent?’

‘A very good question, Phrune. More importantly, what are we
to do about her?’

‘She’s a wild card, Master. She keeps interfering, changing
the future in unpredictable ways.’

‘The wrong ways. You should have dealt with her at once.’.

The squelching stopped abruptly. ‘I could hardly do that,
Master, with hundreds of the Defiance around.’

‘Twice before you had the chance to finish her, and failed.’
Monkshart sat up and his voice took on a low, silky edge. ‘I’m starting to
wonder about you, Phrune.’

‘Master!’ said Phrune with a sharp intake of breath. ‘Count
the hundreds of ways I’ve served you, then weigh my few failures against them.
Where would you be without my balms and unguents, to say nothing of the
body-gloves I’ve risked my life to provide you? Some donors proved most
reluctant to give up their living skin.’

Monkshart sighed. ‘Very well. You have served me, Phrune,
and I’m grateful for it. Assist me into the gloves, please. I must make plans
for the hunt.’

He hopped down from the table and Maelys heard a series of
squelches as the body-glove was eased up his balm-covered body. What
unfortunate had given his or her young life to ease his pain this time?

‘Are you going to take the Defiance with you?’ said Phrune
when it was done and Monkshart was donning his robes.

‘No. We must travel alone, and fast. I’ll make arrangements
for them to follow, and to be fed titbits about the Deliverer on the way,
otherwise they’ll soon lose heart and go back to their villages. Should that
happen, it won’t be so easy to raise them next time.’

‘If there is a next time.’

‘There must be. I’m wondering if the girl isn’t the key to
him. Find her and we may find him, sooner or later. Get onto it, Phrune. Learn
everything there is to be known about Maelys of Nifferlin, her family and clan.
Whatever it costs.’

‘And then?’

‘Hunt her down, Phrune.’

‘Yes, Master. And when I get her?’

‘I’ll extract what she saw in the Pit.’

‘And then, Master?’ Phrune sounded uncertain.

Monkshart laughed harshly. ‘I’m teasing you, faithful
Phrune. You’ll take her skin, of course. Then kill her to make sure no one else
learns what she saw.’

‘Thank you, Master.’ Phrune’s tongue was lap-lapping at his
lips again as he packed away his balms and lotions. He bent to put them in the
chest and the taphloid slipped out of his robes, dangling on a chain around his
neck. She saw it clearly for the first time, and felt a sudden, overpowering
urge to hold it in her hand again.

Maelys bit her knuckles to stop herself from crying out, but
she must have made a sound, for Phrune’s head whipped around. He stole across
the room and she was sure he knew she was there. What was she to do? Should she
burst out, knife in hand, and go for him? She’d never get away from him and
Monkshart, but she might just take Phrune with her, and that would be doing the
world a service.

She was about to scramble out from under the bed when Phrune
walked past the end. What was he doing? She heard the faintest rustle and his
feet appeared, parallel to the side wall. He was standing against it as if
listening for someone outside. Or searching for an aura?

‘Master?’ he said softly.

‘What is it?’ Monkshart said from the adjoining room.

‘I just had a fleeting sense of the girl. I think she’s
still in the camp.’

Monkshart appeared in the doorway. If he came in, and Phrune
went out with the taphloid, she was doomed. ‘I don’t sense any aura nearby, and
my senses are stronger than yours … but we must leave nothing to chance.’

Maelys’s heart was pounding but she tried to hold her nerve.
Even if Phrune didn’t sense anything he would search the tent, just in case. He
could probably hear her thundering heartbeat. He stood there for a long time,
then someone spoke outside, not far away, and he went out, creeping on his bare
feet.

Monkshart stood in the doorway for a moment, head up in the
air as if sensing for something, then went into the adjoining room.

Maelys didn’t dare move while Phrune was outside. She waited
until he came back, the longest ten minutes of her life, and spoke to Monkshart.
A bold warrior or a cunning spy would have lain there until Phrune came into
his room, then slit his throat as he slept, or thrust the dagger up into him
through the thin mattress. Maelys couldn’t do it. Her courage had run out. She
felt her way to the side wall of the tent, rolled under it, walked out of the
camp and ran for her life.

Thommel was sitting by a small, smokeless fire making
tea when she regained the campsite. Maelys checked as soon as she caught sight
of him. He would be furious when he discovered what she’d done, and she could
hardly blame him, since she’d risked everything for no gain. It didn’t occur to
her to lie and say she’d just been for a walk. He had to know. Besides, she’d
always been a truthful person and couldn’t bear to start out with him the way
she had with Nish. Look what those lies and deceits had done for her.

‘The tea’s ready,’ Thommel said with a lazy smile as she
approached. ‘Where have you been?’

Maelys took a deep breath, raising her chin. ‘I went back to
the camp to see if I could get my taphloid back from Phrune.’ She’d told him
about its loss previously.

The smile faded. ‘You’re so brave. After what he’s done, I
wouldn’t have dared.’ He stood up, looking anxious. ‘Maelys, are you all
right?’

‘Yes,’ she said faintly. ‘Why?’

‘You’re breathing as though you’ve just run a race, yet
you’re as white as pastry.’ He took her arm. ‘Here, sit down. Have some tea.
It’s good and sweet; I found some honeycomb on the way back.’

She sat down and took the tea, gratefully. ‘I’m afraid I’ve
been rather stupid.’ She told him what had happened. ‘Phrune was so close that
I could smell him. I was so afraid, I wanted to scream. What if they’d detected
my aura, or I’d left some traces in the tent? I would have ruined everything.’
She was still shaking.

He came across to sit beside her, putting an arm across her
shoulder. ‘I’ve lost things that are precious to me, too. Of course you had to
try to get it back.’

‘You’re not angry with me?’

‘You’re not my servant. I don’t have any right to be angry.
But when I think that you could have fallen into their hands, my heart stops
beating.’

He hugged her briefly, then moved away and poured himself a
mug of tea, for he’d given her his. She sipped the hot sweet drink thoughtfully
and her panic began to recede. She’d gotten the wrong impression about Thommel
the other day. He was gentle and understanding, and it was good to be sharing
the journey with him. She felt safer than she had at any time since she’d left
home.

Unlike Nish, Thommel was good-humoured most of the time. His
dark side only appeared when Nish’s name was mentioned. Thommel believed that
Nish had recognised him as soon as he’d appeared in the Defiance camp, and had
ordered Monkshart and Phrune to keep him at bay. Whenever she said Nish’s name
Thommel became bitter and remote.

But what did he want of Nish, and who was Thommel anyway? He
wouldn’t say, though the name rang falsely in her mind whenever she heard it.

They finished their tea and struck out for Thuntunnimoe
at once, though they didn’t head directly for it. Thommel was painstaking in
covering their tracks, for which Maelys was grateful. Phrune wouldn’t give up
until he took her skin.

She couldn’t stop thinking about that, night and day, nor
Monkshart’s and Phrune’s speculations about destroyed nodes, and what she’d
seen in the Pit. If Jal-Nish had a weakness, what could it be? He was afraid
that all his work would come to nothing in the end, and perhaps that he’d be
undone by the very forces that had made him great in the first place. What
forces? The tears? How could they undo him?

Nothing goes to
nothing
. Monkshart had meant that no power or force could be destroyed,
only transmuted into another form and, rarely, its antithesis. He’d been
talking about the Tifferfyte node being transformed into the Pit of
Possibilities, but surely the principle must also apply to the node whose
destruction had created the Profane Tears.

Maelys laboriously followed her chain of logic. The tears
had been formed by the destruction of a node in a particular way; they were the
distilled essence of that node. But why was Jal-Nish afraid?

Then it struck her, so strongly that it took her breath
away. Could the tears and their antithesis have been created at the same time?
Was that what he was really afraid of? Maybe that’s why he’d captured or killed
all the mancers in the world – so no one else could find the antithesis
to the tears, wherever it was, and use it to nullify their power.