Vengeance

CHAPTER 23

Naked, pants-wetting terror overwhelmed Rix. Magery was the terror he could not overcome, the enemy he could never fight. And the wrythen wasn’t just a creature of magery. It was supernatural, incomprehensible and, since it had no physical body, there was nothing he could do to harm it.

In utter darkness he clung to his sword, which for all he knew was the only real thing left in creation. It was like being in one of the recurring nightmares that woke him screaming and sweating, knowing that the world was ending and it was all his fault because of the terrible thing he’d done, and the service he kept refusing to do …

Pull yourself together. Nightmares aren’t real, and neither are the whispers in your head. That’s why you can never remember them afterwards. Nor is this footless spirit real. It’s just a wrythen, a semi-solid Cythonian shade, and shades can’t touch you. You’re not a coward — you’ve just beaten a caitsthe, for the Gods’ sakes, and no one’s ever done that before. A caitsthe!

It did not help, for this was no ordinary shade. It had brought down the roof with powerful magery the like of which Rix had never seen. Where did it get it from? How could a shade wield such power?

Even in total darkness Rix could sense the fury smoking out of it. Was that because he and Tobry were trespassers, or because they had found those shifter pens down below?

He rotated, boots grating on the gritty floor, and strained until his eyeballs ached. Nothing appeared. The wrythen hadn’t just extinguished itself — it had withdrawn all light from the cavern as it had previously driven the torchlight back into Rix’s burning brand. Presumably, so it could hunt him at its leisure.

It need not have bothered. He truly feared only three things: the bile-dripping tongue of Lady Ricinus, the end-of-the-world nightmares he could never escape when he was home, and uncanny, incomprehensible magery. The wrythen had magery at its command that even Tobry had no understanding of, and Rix feared it the way a bullock feared the slaughterman’s knife.

Devoid of hope, he waited for it to attack. Would he know when it did? In the dark it could come from any direction. It could blast him apart the way it had unpicked the stone in the fissure, or simply stand off and drain him as it had done before, until his muscles died and the creeping cold froze him from the inside out, as the southern ice cap was steadily surrounding Hightspall to crush it out of existence.

‘Light,’ he said softly, hopelessly. ‘Please, let there be light.’

And the faintest emerald glimmer appeared from the rubble. Rix’s heart jumped. ‘Tobe? Is that you?’

There was no answer and the light faded again, but it had to be Tobry, for the wrythen’s light was glacier-coloured. Tobry was alive, and it gave Rix new hope. He had to find a way out. He could not allow his friend to die here and be sucked dry by that fell creature.

Something scraped across the rocks, close by, like the side of a leather boot. ‘Tobe?’

Was the wrythen dragging him away? Rix sheathed his sword and began to crawl across the piled rubble, feeling all around. Another scrape came, this time from his left. He lunged and caught the shank of a wiry, hairy leg. Tobry must be unconscious.

Rix tugged gently. A powerful return jerk nearly pulled the leg out of his hand. He took hold with both hands, prepared to give an almighty heave. No! If the wrythen had Tobry by the head, he might break his neck.

Tobry moaned. His boots thumped a tattoo on the rubble and his left hand blinked several times, as though the uncanny light was being forced back into him. How was the wrythen doing that? Rix squinted into the darkness, which was thickest directly above his friend’s head. It seemed to be forming paired whirlpools over Tobry’s eyes, spinning down as if the wrythen was pulling itself towards his skull.

Or reaching into it. What for? What was it doing to him?

Another blink from Tobry’s hand revealed steam wisping up from his eyes. He convulsed, thudded back on the rubble, and Rix knew that if Tobry wasn’t dead now, he soon would be — or worse than dead. He wrenched out his sword and thrust several feet above Tobry’s head, praying that the ancient enchantments on the blade would turn the black whirlpools aside.

A shock almost tore the sword from his hand, then every muscle in Rix’s arm began to spasm and the weapon flailed about wildly. The wry-then reappeared as a bare outline. Rix caught the hilt in his free hand, controlled it, and lunged at its middle.

But the blade dipped of its own accord and struck much lower. The wrythen lit up from the top of its head to the stumps of its shins and a thin scream issued from its gaping mouth, as if the blade had carved real flesh and smashed live bone. The sword’s tip had passed through its leg at the point of one spectral stump and wisps of its ethereal substance were separating from the wound, dripping silently onto the rubble.

In the eerie light, Tobry’s mouth was opening and closing, his eyes fluttering. An incoherent moan issued from low down in his throat, n-n-n-n. What had it done to him?

Rix drew back and was preparing to strike again when the wrythen withdrew half a yard. Its eyes were huge and staring, its plasm quivering. Could it be afraid of him? Then it spoke in a rusty creak, as though it had not used its true voice for centuries.

‘That — sword. Where …?’

It wasn’t Rix the wrythen feared — it was the sword. But why? Heroes must fight to preserve the race. A notorious quote, Tobry had said. Rix wished he had paid attention to his history tutors, and that he had allowed Tobry to test the blade.

Or did the wrythen fear the enchantment against magery? Rix swiped at it.

The wrythen pointed a finger at his chest. ‘Heart — sunder!’

The pain in his heart was like the flesh being torn in two. A molten ache seared up into his head, accompanied by a sick dizziness that drained the strength from him, and his sword arm went so weak that the sword fell to the rubble. The pain in his heart grew; it was going to burst inside his chest; he was about to die.

A hard hand clenched around his calf, fell away, clenched again. ‘Heart-heal,’ croaked Tobry, ‘heart-heal, heart-heal!’ and the bursting pain and icy sickness eased.

‘Heart — sunder!’ repeated the wrythen. This time the finger wavered.

Rix’s heart gave another throb, though the edge of the pain was dull, bearable now. He picked up the sword, feeling so drained that he needed both hands to lift it, and shoved it at the wrythen’s middle. Its plasm recoiled from the blade in all directions, leaving a hole where its belly had been.

‘Upstart, who — are — you?’ it said hoarsely.

He should have kept his mouth shut, used the advantage the sword had given him and hacked the spectre to pieces, but Rix had always been better at fighting than thinking and the insult rankled. He was proud of his House and his ancestors who, in little more than a hundred years, had built Ricinus from nothing to the greatest fortune in the land. Let no man call him upstart. Let no stinking wrythen think that House Ricinus was afraid to speak its name.

‘I am Rix,’ he said. ‘Only child of the noble House Ricinus.’

All motion ceased. The wisps, clumps of nebulosity and enigmatic darknesses of which the wrythen was made hung in the air in a watchful stillness. An alarming stillness. What was it doing? Why wasn’t it speaking?

Rixium Ricinus!

The words weren’t spoken this time, the voice was in his mind again. Why the switch?

‘Do you know me?’ said Rix.

Again that elongated pause. Rix gained the impression that the wrythen was wrestling with a dilemma.

I have not seen you since you were a boy.

The marrow-freezing cold crept upwards and he began to fear that giving the wrythen his name had been a fatal mistake, but he kept his voice steady. ‘I’ve never seen you before.’

No, you haven’t.

Yet the way the wrythen spoke was troublingly familiar.

‘The — sword — is — yours?’ it said aloud.

Rix’s unease swelled. ‘Handed down since forgotten times. In ages past, this sword was the making of our House.’

‘Traitor’s blade,’ cried the wrythen. ‘Liar’s blade. Oathbreaker’s blade.’ ‘It’s a noble weapon,’ Rix cried. ‘I’ve — ’

‘You belong to me. Put down the sword and come.’

‘I … don’t … belong …’ Rix said thickly.

He was bending to lay his sword on the floor when he realised what was happening. How could it have commanded him so easily? How could he have obeyed? He tried to say, ‘Be damned,’ but all that emerged was a grunt.

Rix gathered every ounce of will and managed to say, ‘No,’ though it did not convince him.

‘Yesssss,’ said the wrythen.

Without appearing to move, it had halved the distance between them. Its right hand shot towards Rix’s eyes, shimmying through the air the way it had gone for Tobry. It was trying to get inside Rix’s head, and instinct rose up to defend what his will could not.

He reacted instantly, with the shattering violence and precision that made him such a ferocious warrior. Ducking the hand, he swung his sword out then brought it straight up so it passed up through the wrythen from crotch to chest.

This time he was too quick for it. The enchanted blade parted something too soft to be living flesh yet more solid than any shade, then began to shake so violently that Rix could barely hold it. Tobry jerked as if struck by lightning, let out a thin cry and steam gushed from his mouth, nose and eyes.

The wrythen’s plasm closed around the blade but instantly recoiled, hissing like hot metal quenched in ice. Frost ran along the blade and Rix smiled grimly. The enchantment had done some good after all — no ordinary sword could have touched such a creature.

Both hands shot for Rix’s eyes this time. He jerked the sword out, shook a crust of black ice off it, drew back and swung hard for the region of its heart. The blade went straight through the wrythen, bisecting it, and its halves fluttered in the air for several seconds before it reformed. He swung higher, carving through something more solid, ssssss. A hot shock ran up his arm, his hand went numb and again the sword slipped from his fingers. This time Tobry was directly beneath it.

Rix barely caught the hilt in time, took it in both hands and slashed across the wrythen’s neck, then back. The numbing shocks were not so bad now; he was able to hang onto the blade as the wrythen’s fading segments hissed down the slope of the tunnel, stopped twenty yards away and slowly began to creep together. Had he hurt it? He thought so, for it seemed weaker and was taking much longer to reform than before. But had he done it any serious damage? Unlikely.

‘House — Ricinus,’ it ground out, as though committing the name to memory.

As clearly as if rays of were-light had painted the scene on the wall of the cavern, Rix saw the ice leviathan of his nightmares rolling over the palace walls, crushing them to dust and his people to paste. The cold crept to his throat. What if it wasn’t a nightmare, but a premonition, like past scenes he had painted from his imagination that had come true? Why, why had he come up here? The wrythen had nearly taken control of him, and it gave the impression that it already owned him.

Taking Tobry under the arms, Rix dragged him away, keeping well clear of the fallen caitsthe, though he felt sure it was dead. Further down the tunnel, the segments of the wrythen merged, though it did not come after him. How long until it would? As he heaved Tobry onto his shoulder, his right ankle, which he had managed to ignore during the battle, flared with pain.

He staggered to the entrance, losing sight of the wrythen when he turned the corner, and carried Tobry out past the basin with its perilous water, through the illusion into a leaden gloom, and onto the rubble slope.

‘How the hell are we going to get home?’ he said quietly.

The wind had dropped and snow was falling so thickly that he could barely make out the vine thicket. Leather and Beetle would be in the boulder-strewn clearing on the other side, assuming they had not run off. Or been eaten.

‘How are you feeling?’ said Rix.

No reply. The top of Tobry’s head was bloody, presumably from being struck by a rock, and yellow, oozing blisters were clustered around his eyes, nose and mouth where the wrythen had tried to enter. He had been out for a long time. Too long. After such a blow, sometimes people faded away and not even the healers knew why.

‘You were right about the weather,’ he said, talking for the company. ‘You’re always right and I should have listened.’

He was dragging Tobry through the vine thicket when a jackal let out a barking howl. Tobry’s unconscious body twitched, his eyes shot open, staring straight up, then his blistered eyelids shuddered shut.

Rix gripped his friend’s shoulder. For the cry of a jackal shifter to break through Tobry’s unconsciousness, his terror of them must be monumental. And I led you up here, he thought. I pressured you to stay even when the danger became obvious, and you put your fears to one side because you can never let a friend down.

‘Sorry, Tobe. Some friend I am.’

Every second’s delay was a ticking heartbeat further from survival. Rix crawled along the low passage through the vine thicket, heaving Tobry behind him. If a single jackal shifter attacked in here, they would both die.

There was no sign of the horses when he reached the lower side of the vine thicket, and panic flared. Rix fought it down. One thing at a time. He propped Tobry against a tree and checked him all over. The skull beneath the bloody bruise felt sound, yet his eye sockets were almost black beneath the weeping blisters and his eyelids were hot. What had the wrythen been up to?

Tobry’s pupils were dilated, though at least they were the same size. If it was only a mild concussion, he would recover with no more than a bad headache. But if the concussion was severe, he could die.

And if the wrythen had done something to him, something unnatural? Then the Gods help him, for Rix would not be able to.