Vengeance

CHAPTER 103

It had been bad enough killing an enemy, Banj. How much worse would it be to cut down a friend? Could Tali kill Rix, even to save herself?

He stopped six feet away, within lunging distance, and still she did not know what to do. The magery Deroe had raised in her was bubbling beneath the surface, and if there was no choice she would use it on Rix to save her life, but she was afraid to bring it all the way too soon in case she lost control. She could not attack Deroe with it. He had cleverly blocked that way.

Rix was gasping and grunting as he strove to overcome Lyf’s compulsion but she knew it was futile. Now Lyf had a body, he was far stronger than before and Rix could never break free of his own accord.

He took another step, reaching out for her. Tali backpedalled, blinking away tears as she prepared to defend herself the only way she could. Her fingertips tingled. The fury that had killed Banj was only a breath away, a thread, a sigh …

The floor shuddered, then a golden light burst from Rannilt, driving the misty shadows off and revealing the simple beauty of Lyf’s ancient temple for the first time. She cried out in wonder and sat up.

Pain sheared through Tali’s skull, worse than the time the sunstone had smashed in the shaft. Her gift rose uncontrollably, as it had that time, and her fingertips began to sting. The sensations were unmistakeable — someone had broken Rix’s gigantic heatstone and the cataclysm must have burnt him to charcoal. Who could have done it? Who would have known it was the only way?

Only one man.

‘Tobry!’ she screamed, but then the white blizzard was forced out through her spread fingers and she could not stop it. Her eyes flooded until she could not see. ‘Rix?’ Had she killed him?

Not Rix as well! Was she to lose everyone she cared about? Tali swung aside and rock shattered with a roar, chattering off the ceiling and walls, falling all around. She blinked the tears away. She was pointing towards the left-hand stone raptor and her white torrent was tearing the stone apart.

‘Rix, where are you?’ she gasped as the well emptied, and the flood faded. Her gift — if gift it was, and not a curse — was gone again.

Her burning fingertips were covered in hundreds of tiny red specks. The room was full of dust and smoke. She could not see anyone.

‘Garrimoolish! Flisseroomph blorrgggg! Gebblinengle-googaah!’

Rix came reeling through the clouds, shaking his head between his hands and raving like a madman. What had she done? Had she burnt his brain? She could see no sign of injury — it must be the effect of the shattered heatstone.

He stopped, swaying on his feet and utterly bewildered. The dust began to settle. His mouth gaped; his eyes flicked back and forth as though he was watching a fast-moving scene. He frowned, nodded and extended his right hand as though mixing paint on a palette. Then, with sweeping movements of an invisible brush, Rix painted a moving picture in the air for all to see.

It was another scene set in this cellar, though the filth and clutter was gone. The walls were carved with gentle Cythian dioramas, the floor marked with the swirls of a kingly tattoo. As Rix imagined the scene, he painted it so vividly that Tali could have been there.

But this was not a divination — it was a revelation.

A slender young man stood at the door, wearing the scarlet king’s robes of old Cythe. He held out his arms, welcoming five Hightspallers into the most sacred place he knew, the private temple where he worked king-magery to heal his land. The temple was bright with light, and uncluttered. A simple stone altar stood at the far end. The young man, Lyf, indicated a low table and the visitors sat around it, talking merrily while he treated them as honoured guests, bringing them food and drink, and serving them with his own hands.

The biggest of the Hightspallers, a florid, yellow-haired giant, produced a parchment document, evidently a charter or contract, and handed it to Lyf. The jollity faded; he read it, frowning, then shook his head.

The giant scowled and brandished a slender book at Lyf, pointing to the words on a particular page. Lyf scanned the text, thrust the book away as though he had read an obscenity and stood up, furiously indicating the door.

One of the women — thin-faced, with a prow of a nose and hair cropped close like a soldier — drew a swirling object like an elbrot and pointed it at Lyf. He stared at it as if he did not know what it was.

The elbrot lit a muddy green, like the misty light in an endless swamp, like the light that pervaded the murder cellar. Lyf convulsed, recovered, then ran for his staff which stood by the door. The elbrot flashed and he was brought down, trembling all over and his legs thrashing. The yellow-haired man dragged him to the table and, while the other four held him down, put a quill in his hand. The elbrot flashed a third time and, though Lyf fought the enchantment with all his strength, his hand inscribed his kingly signature on the charter.

The five shook hands, grinning and congratulating one another as if they had just won a kingdom. The king collapsed, shuddering violently. The yellow-haired man drew a curved sword — the same sword that now hung by Rix’s side — and said something to the others, laughing.

They cried ‘No!’ as one, but he strode to the fallen king and, with a mighty blow, hacked his feet off, then stood them on the king’s own altar as a bloody trophy. The five dragged Lyf out, his stumps trailing blood, like a living corpse to be disposed of.

The final image hung in the air for a minute, slowly fading. Rix stared at it as if he had no idea what he had done or how he had done it, then his shoulders slumped. It was over.

‘That can’t have been the Five Heroes,’ said Tali, dismayed. ‘That brute of a man wasn’t Axil Grandys. It’s a mistake; a lie …’

But she knew it to be truth as only Rix could portray it. She had also recognised the dark-haired woman as Sporrealie, the Hero she had always revered.

Tali could not take it in. The revelation was too shocking, the betrayal too monstrous, the implications too far-reaching. The Hightspall she loved was based on a lie, the realm irredeemably tainted at the moment of its founding.

No one spoke. Rannilt lay quietly again, her golden light gone. Rix was swaying, his eyes staring. Behind his protective wards, Deroe let out a brief, incongruous snigger. He, alone among them, had not been affected by the imploding heatstone.

The stone face cracked and crumbled. Now Lyf’s face could be seen behind it, cold and implacable. Only Deroe’s wards held him out, but for how long?

‘Two days before that scene,’ said Lyf, speaking aloud this time, ‘I saved the yellow-haired man’s life, and that is how he repaid me. It was just the first betrayal by your glorious Five Herovians, who used their foul Immortal Text to justify stealing our land. Then they walled me up, bleeding from my stumps, in a forgotten catacomb. Left me to die unshriven in unholy darkness, screaming and clawing at the walls.’

‘Why?’ Tali whispered.

‘To prevent my king-magery being passed on. Axil Grandys planned to destroy our kingship and take the magery for himself.’

‘Is that why he tore down the rest of your city, yet preserved this cellar?’

‘It wasn’t a filthy, rat infested hole then,’ Lyf said bitterly. ‘The king’s healing temple was the very crux of Cythe. But until Grandys’s living petrifaction at my wrythen hands — oh, yes, I made him pay! I turned him to opal and hurled him into the Abysm, to spend eternity in helpless agony — he haunted this place, carrying out his profane experiments that have befouled it forever, vainly trying to find the lost secret of king-magery.’

Rix shivered, closed his eyes, then opened them again. So the opalised man was Axil Grandys. Rix’s sword had once been Grandys’s sword and he was Lyf’s enemy. But had the sword led Rix to the caverns to attack Lyf, or to recover Grandys’s opalised body?

‘Now you understand,’ said Lyf, ‘why the land you plundered so ruthlessly rises up to cast you out. You don’t know how to heal it and would not if you could. Your presence is a blight, a corruption of all good things.’ He gestured to Rix. ‘The compulsion still binds you. Cut out the pearl.’

Rix studied Tali for a moment as though he had never seen her before, then turned back to Lyf. ‘I am unbound. You have no hold on me, nor ever will again.’

‘Do it,’ grated Lyf, ‘or I shall visit such torment on you — ’

Rix spread his arms, making an offering of his own body. ‘No pain you inflict on me can atone for my house’s crimes or my own betrayals.’

He turned his back on his enemy as if to say, Do your worst.

The face withdrew, then the cracks in the stone lit yellow as Lyf attacked the wall. Deroe’s agate wards began to rattle and shake, flaring and dying and flaring again. Little chips of stone spalled from them and fell all around. How much longer could they hold Lyf out?

‘Tali, I can never repay you,’ said Rix, misty-eyed. ‘How did you free me?’

‘It wasn’t me. Tobry must have broken your heat — ’ Tali choked on the thought.

‘What’s the matter?’

‘When my sunstone imploded in the shaft, it burned the Cythonians to char. Tobry — ’ She choked. ‘How could he survive such a blast?’

Rix rocked backwards, staring into infinity. ‘Despite what everyone thought, even me, he was always the greater man. If he’s given his life for us, we must honour him by the manner of our own living — and dying.’

Tali took his hand. It was warm and strong. Her own fingers ached from the cold. ‘What now?’

‘I can’t fight magians.’ He drew his sword. ‘Use your gift on Deroe.’

‘It spent itself when the heatstone burst.’

‘Can’t you get it back?’

‘I’ve never been able to command it. Deroe said ebony pearls are too unstable to be controlled by the host. They have to be cut out first.’

‘Then we’ll find another way,’ said Rix.

Staggering footsteps sounded in the passage outside, then Tobry called, ‘Tali, Rix?’ He sounded at the extreme of exhaustion.

‘Tobry?’ Tali cried. He was alive and that was all that mattered.

He lurched to the transparent barrier, supported by Glynnie, and clung to the door frame, his burnt hands smearing red on the stone.

She gasped. His hair had been burnt away and his chest was a mass of weeping blisters.

‘Tobe, what have you done?’ said Rix, running through the barrier to him. ‘Here, let me help you through.’

‘I’m all right,’ said Tobry. ‘The book protected my face and throat, at least. I’ve had worse injuries.’

‘Not much worse,’ said Rix.

He backed through the barrier and took hold of Tobry but it would not allow him to pass into the cellar. Deroe’s spell still held him out. Tali tried to push through; it would not allow her, either. She reached out to Tobry and managed to lay her healing hands on his chest but the burns were beyond her small gift.

Sconts! said Lyf, mind to minds. Kill the man called Tobry and feed him to the shifters.

‘Who the blazes is Sconts?’ said Rix.

‘Tinyhead,’ said Tali.

And then she heard them: a horde of small, dog-like creatures, their claws scratching the flagstones as they raced down a nearby passage. Jackal shifters. And Tobry was mortally afraid of shifters.

He forced himself upright, thrust Glynnie and her little brother behind him, and took his elbrot in his left hand and sword in his right. Rix looked from Tali to Tobry, not knowing what to do.

‘Lyf is my battle,’ said Tali. ‘Stand by Tobry.’

‘It should have been me,’ said Rix.