The Fate of the Fallen (The Song of the Tears Book 1) (67 page)

It went flat and the curved edges rolled out in all
directions, stretching to enclose his head, then extending down his neck and
trunk, and across his shoulders and underneath, until his whole body had been
enveloped. Again the light faded, though not completely this time. Not enough
to conceal what was happening to him, unfortunately.

It began with little blisters forming on his face, thousands
of them, until no patch of skin was unaffected. The blisters expanded, linking
into a continuous swelling which spread across his head and inflated with
fluid, lifting the skin away from his flesh in one bloody piece, hair and all.
The same process was extending down his body. She averted her eyes.

Flydd’s fingers clenched and unclenched. He writhed, went
rigid, writhed again and rose slightly off the floor as the blisters grew and
combined beneath him. In a few minutes he was enclosed in a transparent balloon
of inflated skin, beneath which the raw flesh bubbled and wept red trails until
eddies in the blister fluid rendered it opaque.

The only parts of him unchanged were his eyes, staring
sightlessly up until the blister closed them off, then his mouth and nostrils
as well. He no longer bore any resemblance to Flydd. He was just one gigantic,
human-shaped blister almost as big as Zham.

Something popped beneath him, releasing a nauseating stench.
Maelys didn’t dare move in case he called on her, so she held her nose and endured
it. The blue pinprick of light below the roof beam turned green and faded until
she could barely make out the shape of the blister, though what she could see
was alarming enough.

It was undulating, waves rippling through the fluid from one
end of his body to the other. It swelled at his feet, but shrank again. Pulses
ran down and back up. His knees inflated; the blister fluid whirled there like
water going down a plughole, then went still.

Nothing else happened for a long time. Maelys’s own knees were
aching. So was her back. She settled against a chair and waited. And waited.
She was half asleep when the door was thrust open and Nish burst in. He took
two strides into the room then stopped abruptly, staring at the elongated blob
on the floor.

‘Is that –?’ He couldn’t finish. ‘What’s he doing,
Maelys?’

‘Xervish used the first crystal to cast the renewal spell,
and this is what happened. That’s all I know.’

Nish made a gagging sound. ‘Is – is
this
how it’s supposed to go?’

‘I have no idea. He didn’t tell me anything.’

He cursed softly, his chest rising and falling. Water
dropped from his coat, forming muddy puddles on the earth floor.

‘Is there any sight of the enemy?’ she asked.

‘No sight. No sound. They could be up to any devilry and we
won’t know until they fall on us.’ He looked down at her. ‘Three of us can’t
stop them. There’s no way out.’

‘We mustn’t give up hope, Nish.’ Even in her own ears she
sounded unconvincing. Nish gave her a desperate, white-eyed look and went out.

Maelys resumed her watch, though nothing happened apart from
an occasional swirl within the blister. An hour later Nish returned, inspected
the amorphous shape on the floor and retreated without saying anything. Maelys
was really worried now. Half the mancers who had attempted renewal didn’t
survive it, Flydd had said, and surely most had been stronger and less frail
than he. Were those faint movements within the blister his death agonies?

Without warning, his distended stomach inflated even more,
bulging to the left then the right as if there were wrestling twins inside, and
slowly began to shrink until it was as flat as it had been when she’d first met
him; then even flatter. It went concave and hard, outlining the stringy muscles
of his belly. The bubble pulled in at the sides but grew at either end; there
were more roilings, churnings, bulges and depressions, and more unpleasant
smells.

A spasm racked him from one end to the other; the bubble
churned more violently than ever, and the fold which had closed off Flydd’s mouth
parted with a sticky hiss. ‘Crrrr!’ he said, an agonised crackle. ‘Ccccrrri
–’

She went to her knees again, reaching for him but,
remembering his earlier warning, drew back before she touched the bubble.
‘Xervish, what is it?’

‘Crrr – crrrrr –’

The second crystal! She sprang up, snatched the blue crystal
from the case and carefully slid it between his balloon-like fingers. Flydd
tried to raise it but the bubble was now so taut that he could not bend his
elbow.

The fold over his mouth parted again. He made an urgent
sound she could not decipher, ‘Wa! Wa!’ and it wasn’t until he’d said it a
third time that she realised he meant, ‘Away!’

Fool! She sprang backwards and was turning aside when the
crystal went off, dazzlingly bright. Shards punctured his finger blisters,
which spurted fluid like pricked sausages in a frying pan but quickly sealed
over again.

Flydd let out a hoarse, crackly scream. Beneath the
body-blister, bulges and depressions undulated in all directions. His legs
lengthened suddenly as if propelled by bands of rubber, before whipping back to
thick, stumpy limbs no longer than her forearm.

Maelys put her hand over her mouth. The spell was going
wrong. He was going to end up a monstrosity. His legs lengthened again, but
much further this time, until the base of his blister-feet touched the wall,
before shrinking once more. His head flattened, became pointed, then sucked in
on the left side.

His chest bulged like a beer barrel before flattening like a
board; every other part of him went through bizarre transformations, each
accompanied by hisses and crackly gasps, and revolting stenches.

The blister swelled all over before finally contracting
until a normal man’s form was revealed, rather larger than Flydd’s original
shape and size, though the fluid within it remained blood-coloured and opaque.
He became as rigid as a post, remained that way for several minutes, and
stretched out his hand again.

‘Crrr – crrrrr –’

Her heart gave a leap. The renewal must have gone very wrong
if he needed a third crystal, and it only left two to crack the barrier and
hold open the path through the shadow realm, whatever that was. Two wouldn’t be
enough. Even if he survived renewal they wouldn’t be able to escape now.

There was no choice but to go on. When she turned back with
the green crystal the blister was contracting again, but this time it went all
the way down as the fluid was drawn into Flydd’s tissues. It shrank tight on
his torso, thickened, darkened then tore and began to peel away like week-old
sunburn, exposing new pink skin beneath, as smooth as a baby’s.

The body it clothed was that of a mature man in middle age,
though he wasn’t the scrawny runt Flydd had been. This fellow was of average
height and muscular build, though she could still see traces of the scars he
had before renewal.

The blister still covered his face and she couldn’t make out
any details there, but he looked in good health. She breathed out. Flydd had
come through and, if renewal was nearly done, he might not need to use the third
crystal after all.

She slipped it between his extended fingers – the
blisters hadn’t collapsed there either – and turned away at once, though
this time the flash was barely visible. He’d required hardly any power.

But then blood began to trickle down his fingers, and her
own blood seemed to harden in her veins. What had gone wrong? He dropped the
shattered fragments of the green crystal and reached out to her again.

‘Crrr – crrrrr –’

FORTY-SIX

Nish sat on the bench outside the hut, handed the lantern
to Zham and unfolded Flydd’s plan of the defences. The wind tried to tear it
out of his hands. Zham held the lantern close, shielding Nish from the worst of
it. Colm stood on his other side, the hostility gone, though Nish didn’t think
they could ever be friends. Still, it didn’t matter now.

The plan showed the cloverleaf outline of the plateau top,
with the four clefts between the lobes clearly marked, as well as the hut near
the rim of the southern lobe. Other markings were explained in a series of annotations,
in Flydd’s small, neat hand.

‘The side walls of the clefts are sheer,’ Nish read, ‘but
skilled climbers with ropes and irons could make their way up the steep broken
stone in the inner ends. The clefts are protected with trip lines a hundred spans
below the top, which set off wooden clappers by the hut –’ He looked up.
‘That’s what I heard as we came up yesterday. Bloody Flydd! He knew we were
here, yet he let us wander around like geese for a full day.’

‘Get on with it,’ said Colm.

Nish read on. ‘– giving a warning so there’s time to
drop fire pots onto the peat walls in the three narrow clefts.’

‘Peat walls?’ said Colm.

Nish squinted at the plan. ‘The inner ends of those clefts
are walled off below the top with oil-soaked peat blocks that can be set on
fire to delay an attack.’

‘Clever,’ said Zham. ‘They won’t be able to climb around a
burning wall, and if they try to pull it down it’ll collapse on them.’

‘What about the main cleft?’ said Zham. ‘It doesn’t have a
wall.’

Nish frowned at the plan. ‘It just says to hurl the barrels
down onto the rocks.’

‘What barrels?’

‘They’re stored in hollows to right and left of the cleft.’

‘What’s in them?’ said Colm. ‘It doesn’t say. Oil, I
suppose.’

‘I don’t see what good oil would be,’ said Colm, ‘but let’s
get it done.’

‘Better to wait until we hear the clappers,’ said Zham. ‘If
it rains, the oil will wash away before morning. Let’s start doing the rounds
of the clefts.’

‘I’m worn out, Zham.’

Nish was huddled in a depression near the main cleft, out of
the wind. They’d been tramping from one cleft to another for hours, keeping
watch. There had been no sign of the enemy and he was wet, cold and exhausted.
In the olden days he could have endured it without complaint but he felt a
lesser man now …

‘You must stay awake, surr,’ said Zham, shaking him. ‘It
won’t be long.’

The faintest mist had risen, just enough to create a halo
around the moon. Even in the dim light his eyes looked bloodshot, but his back
was held as straight as ever. Perhaps straighter. Zham was a simple man whose
faith in Nish was absolute. His oath had sustained him through every trial so
far and it drove him now. If he felt doubt or fear, it was carefully hidden.

Zham’s hand caught Nish as he swayed backwards. ‘Sorry!’
Nish said, horrified that he’d dozed off. During the war, a sentry would have
been executed for sleeping on watch, but the greater shame was letting one’s
comrades down.

Zham was staring straight ahead, his big jaw working,
stolidly refusing to judge, which made it worse. Nish forced himself to his
feet. ‘I’ll go back to the hut and see how they’re going. Can you –?’

‘I’ll do the rounds again, and get Colm’s report from the
other side.’

‘Thanks, Zham.’ Nish reached up to clap him on the shoulder,
then turned away to slosh down the churned track to the hut, praying that
Flydd’s renewal would show progress this time.

It didn’t.

Maelys forced herself to stay calm. ‘What’s gone wrong,
Xervish?’

‘Crrr – crrrrr –’

She stumbled to the crystal case, extracted the sulphur
yellow crystal, the second last, and slid it into his fingers, which were still
sausage-like. They clenched around the crystal, he reached across to slip it
into his right hand, and his left hand reached out to her again.

‘What is it, Xervish? Do you want the last crystal?’ They
were doomed either way.

The renewed, unfamiliar Flydd was squealing deep in his
throat and reaching for her hand, but she couldn’t work out what he wanted.
Alarmed, she backed away, remembering the warning and afraid of his touch, but
his squealing grew more urgent. He reached out to her. Could he be trying to
tell her something, or was the thing inside the blister not Flydd at all? What
if she touched him and caused the spell to go wrong?

What if she didn’t help him and renewal failed? She had to
take the risk. How could he hope to complete the spell when he was in such
pain?

Taking a deep breath, she touched his left index finger with
her own. He snatched at her hand, his bloated fingers compressing around hers
with a hiss as the remaining fluid was squeezed back into his tissues. He was
much stronger now; his grip crushed her hand.

A boiling surge ran through her fingers and up her arm,
followed by a dizzying wrench that had her staggering and fending off the floor
with her free hand. Letting out a tormented cry, he tried to push her away.

Maelys attempted to pull free, seized by a sudden panic, but
his left hand had locked around hers and a line of heat was running from her
midriff, along her arm and into her fingers, growing stronger all the time. The
centre of her chest, surrounding her heart, grew so hot, tight and painful that
she couldn’t stand upright.

As she hit the floor, the lines of fire were like molten tin
being pumped down her veins. Her fingers were burning now; she could feel the
heat streaming from her into Flydd, and as it did her chest cooled; her racing
heart began to beat more slowly. And more slowly still.

The coolness continued down her arm into her throbbing
fingers, but her chest muscles were stiffening with cold, her heartbeat slowing
to a murmur. Another wave of dizziness swept through her …

She woke up lying on the floor on the other side of the hut,
her head and shoulder aching as if she’d crashed hard into something.

Or been thrown.

‘Maelys?’ Nish was standing in the doorway, still
dripping.