Vengeance

CHAPTER 102

As Deroe took hold of the pearls, the eyes in the stone head on the wall went yellow. The trapdoor in the ceiling burst open, then the screw-shaped stairs that Tali remembered from ten years ago spiralled down between her and Deroe, grounding beside the black bench.

Deroe let out a squeal of terror, rolled his hand across the three pearls and the agate wards around the walls flared. Tali sprang at him, knowing she had only seconds to get the pearls, but he scrabbled past the stone raptors with them, slipping and skidding in his panic to get away.

A sword came clattering down the stairs, striking sparks with every impact — Rix’s sword. Tali’s heart stopped for several beats. This must be the time.

The sword was followed by several jangling objects she could not make out in the dim light, then a series of thumps and grunts, and Rix came tumbling through the air to slam into the floor.

The impact would have broken her bones but he sat up and picked up the objects, one by one. Tali recognised the bone reamer, the green-metal glove and the golden tongs. Rusty barbs scraped down the knobs of her spine.

She backed away, trying to make no sound, but Rix’s horror-filled eyes picked her out of the darkness and he took a slow step towards her. He was fully conscious of what Lyf was forcing him to do and it was eating him alive. Away to the left, Tobry was hacking desperately at the transparent barrier.

‘Rix, stop!’ Tobry screamed, until his voice went hoarse.

Rix could not meet his eyes, nor Tali’s. She had never seen a man with a greater longing for death.

‘You should have let Rixium ride out to war.’ Deroe, sheltering behind one of the raptors, let out another incongruous giggle.

‘Rix?’ said Tali, fighting her own urge to scream. She had to stay calm. There had to be a way to get through to him. ‘You’ve got to fight the compulsion.’

‘Been fighting it for ten years.’ Rix’s voice was as dead as his eyes. ‘Lost!’

He turned towards her. One of Deroe’s pearls called to hers and Tali’s gift rose in a flush of anger, though not her own. The anger came from outside her, as if Deroe was manipulating her gift for his own ends, and it was one step too far.

‘Kill him,’ said Deroe. ‘You’ve killed before; I can read the blood lust in you.’

Her hand rose, involuntarily. She fought it down — she would not be dictated to like a slave — and her gift sank with it. Deroe cursed, pointed the parasol frame at the face on the end wall, caressed the pearls and an ultrasonic screech turned the stone nose to powder. Lyf’s yellow eyes disappeared behind a puff of dust.

Cut down Deroe first, said a voice in her head that she knew to be Lyf’s voice, though he was not talking to her.

Rix stopped in mid-stride. His eyes crossed, then he swivelled and headed after the magian. Deroe scuttled away and took shelter behind a low granite pedestal. A square trophy case stood on top, its sides made of crystal so grimy that Tali could not see what it contained.

Deroe’s mouth twisted into a lopsided grin and he began to rub the dirt off the trophy case.

Stop!

Rix stopped, his arms dangling like a run-down clockwork toy. Deroe cleaned the last of the crystal faces, stepped aside, and within the trophy case Tali saw a pair of skeletal feet, severed at the ankles as if by the blow of a sword.

‘Axil Grandys’s most prized trophy,’ said Deroe, looking up at the crazed stone face, ‘and your greatest weakness. Ha-ha-ha!’

One stone eye cracked out and a shadow-clad finger protruded through the hole. A whisper of sound swelled to a howl, then a cloudy rock-glass barrier rose between the trophy case and Deroe, locking him into the right-hand end of the cellar.

Take the master pearl and bring it to me.

Rix rotated, the soles of his boots grinding on the gritty floor. Tali could see the sick failure in his eyes, that his life had been pre-ordained ever since he had been taken to the cellar by his mother ten years ago and ensnared by Lyf. How could she stop him?

‘Rix,’ she said desperately, ‘how did he get to you?’

Rix shook his head. He did not know.

Tobry broke off his futile attack on the barrier, for the question had set his mind racing. Rix only had nightmares in the palace, and then only in his own chambers. But Tobry had checked them for magery many times and had found no trace of an enchantment save in Rix’s sword. Unquestionably, the compulsion did not come through the sword.

That left only one possibility — the heatstone.

Tobry turned and ran. To his knowledge, no inanimate object was enchanted in its natural state — only through deliberate human intervention did magery come about. The heatstone in the salon contained no enchantment, so how had Lyf, who could only travel to the cellar, used it to get at Rix?

Tobry raced up the dusty stairs. There was an ache in his side and his healing wounds burnt as though they were tearing open, but he dared not rest. Tali could not hold Rix off long. Either he would kill her for the pearl, or she would find her gift and kill him. The one possibility was as dreadful as the other.

He reached the ground level and hurtled along the halls to Rix’s chambers, bursting the door open with his shoulder and skidding the length of the hall into the salon, where the heatstone twinkled as balefully as ever. If he broke it, surely it must snap the link that allowed Lyf to control Rix through the compulsion.

Glynnie started up from the couch with a cry of fear.

‘Get out!’ he bellowed. ‘Take the boy with you. Now!’

She took one look at his face and ran, dragging Benn behind her.

The heatstone was a good four inches thick; it would take a sledgehammer wielded by a blacksmith to break it. Tobry ran around the room twice, cursing. There was nothing here that could even knock a chip out of it. Perhaps it was just as well. When Tali’s little heatstone had smashed on his elbrot in the caverns, it had burnt him badly. If he succeeded in breaking this one, there would be nothing left of him, and it would be a hideous way to die.

But if the heatstone remained, Rix would kill Tali and Lyf would get the master pearl. Tobry could not allow that. For the sake of his friends, and the woman he loved who did not love him, he had to make the sacrifice.

He was looking around wildly when The Consolation of Vengeance caught his eye, lying on the blankets where Tali had dropped it. The iron book was potent with magery, and without further thought he picked it up and slammed it against the centre of the heatstone.

The impact jarred all the way up to the back of his neck. The heatstone was unmarked, though small red flecks of spent alkoyl, driven out of the deeply etched words, had splattered across the middle, outlining the title in reverse.

Tobry was swinging the book again when the heatstone cracked beneath each red fleck. The cracks spread and merged and fire licked along them, then the centre of the heatstone swelled, showering him with blistering chips of stone.

He dived behind the couch, knowing it could not save him, as the centre of the heatstone was drawn inwards. It pulled in the rest, crumbling the enormous stone to dust which collapsed to a bright red mote, then vanished with a roar like an erupting volcano.

At the moment of the implosion, every captured Cythonian in the chancellor’s cells next door to Palace Ricinus fell unconscious, save one.

Wil the Sump rubbed his aching forehead, stared around him with the blind eye sockets that saw so much further than any ordinary man, then giggled, ‘She the one. This the ending.’

Using a smear of alkoyl from his hidden stock, he burnt through the door of his cell and scuttled along the red, contorted passages of the palace.

‘Clever Wil,’ he said, for no one he encountered noticed him. ‘Stupid chancellor.’

Outside, Wil scurried across the grounds to the unguarded side gate to Palace Ricinus, and through it, drawn inexorably to a cellar he had never seen. The ending was close now, but who would win the contest — the Scribe or the one? Which story would prevail? He had to be there, had to see it first. Wil was so tense he struggled to draw breath.

Back in his palace, the chancellor listened to the reports of Wil’s progress, smiled, and called for the captain of his personal guard.