The Curse on the Chosen (The Song of the Tears Book 2) (11 page)

Light sprayed from the tip of the whippy wooden rod he was
holding, illuminating a blood-red bedchamber. Its walls were lined with red
marble, the ceiling was shaped like a tent, though draped with several of the
cord-thick webs that had so unnerved her previously, and the centre of the
chamber was occupied by a large bed with eight posts and a three-spans-high
canopy whose velvet curtains, though somewhat ragged and dusty, had lost none
of their ancient magnificence.

‘Turn down the bed, Phrune,’ said Vivimord. Phrune slopped
forward, but Vivimord added, ‘on second thoughts, I’ll do it myself –
lengths of intestine on the sheets would not be conducive to romance.’

‘Romance?’ she said hoarsely.

Squelch-slurp
,
went Phrune.

‘Nor mere animal lust,’ said Vivimord. ‘Back, Phrune.’

Phrune retreated and Vivimord deftly flicked dust off the
covers and turned down the bed.

‘Better test the equipment; it’s many years since I was last
here.’

He touched the first of a line of polished platinum stubs on
the head of the bed. Nothing happened. He pressed it harder and flames sprang
up from engraved glass lanterns mounted on brackets around the four walls.
Vivimord stroked his fingers clockwise around the stub; the flames dimmed. He
touched another stub; a glow appeared in a pair of brass censers hanging to
either side of a dusty chandelier. Trails of drifting fragrant smoke made
Maelys’s nose tingle. Suddenly the colours in the room seemed brighter and
richer, but she itched worse than ever.

As Vivimord touched the third platinum stub, a faint,
mesmerising music began from pipes and drums, like the sound of players
drifting up from a distant ballroom to be heard in snatches by a listener on a
high balcony. He listened for a minute, head to one side and toe tapping, as if
briefly he had been transported to another age, then pressed the stub again and
the music faded.

A fourth stub was separate from the others but Vivimord had
his hand positioned casually, as if to conceal it from her, and when he took
his hand away the stub was no longer visible. She was wondering why when he
strolled to the foot of the bed and stood looking down at her, rubbing his chin.

‘I wonder – what creature is it that you dislike above
all others?’

Instinctively, she looked up at the tented ceiling, but the
dimmed lanterns no longer illuminated it. Maelys shivered.

‘Swamp creepers disgust you, don’t they? I detected your
screams when you were coming down the chimney. You can’t bear the sight of
them, or the smell. And to have them crawling over you, trailing their slime
across your face …’

Maelys clenched her jaw and swallowed. Let him think that;
it might give her a chance.

‘They give you the horrors, and if you were trapped in the
middle of a mound of them you might go insane, but they’re not what you fear
most, are they? I can read you, little Maelys. You’re the bravest girl I’ve met
in years, but you have a weakness.’

She didn’t reply.

‘Spiders?’ said Vivimord. ‘You don’t like scuttling
creatures with lots of legs.’

‘I’m not afraid of spiders; I used to catch them in little
pots and put them out of Nifferlin Manor all the time.’ That wasn’t quite true;
she’d been terrified of the huge, warty toad-spiders that she’d sometimes
encountered in the old ruins behind Nifferlin. Maelys was reminded of the
thick, cord-like webs that had been everywhere in the chamber of the cursed
flame. She’d never seen the creatures that had made the webs, but they must be
worse than toad-spiders.

‘But you didn’t kill them, did you?’ Vivimord said. ‘You’re
soft-hearted, and that’s a weakness.’

‘They were no danger to me.’

‘It still shows weakness. Do you know what an octopede is?’

She shook her head. To her left, dead Phrune let out a
slippery, coughing bark; jeering laughter, perhaps. Vivimord was wrong,
whatever he was talking about: Maelys feared no creature on Santhenar the way
she feared her own kind, and especially Vivimord and Phrune. Animals could be
violent and vicious, but they weren’t malicious and they did not torment other
creatures for their own sick pleasure.

‘This is no laughing matter, Phrune,’ said Vivimord. ‘This
is retribution, not revenge. Retribution is measured justice and, carried out
dispassionately, it elevates us; revenge is a base emotion that eats us away
from the inside and, in the end, destroys us.’ He studied his former acolyte.
‘You can’t understand, can you? The senses were everything to you, alas. That’s
what brought you undone and robbed me of your service when I needed it most.’

Vivimord raised his right arm towards the ceiling. Maelys
heard a faint
zzzzzttt
, then
something long and corpse-white tumbled through the air, trailing a short
length of corded web, and thumped down onto the bed.

Maelys gasped and clutched at her chest, for the creature
had an elongated body nearly two spans long, rather flabby and warty, a long
straight spine or sting at the rear, and short, plump legs extending sideways.
A pair of fishhook-like claws jagged at the covers, then it shot over the side
of the bed into the darkness underneath.

She shuddered violently and felt like throwing up. She could
not have said why it filled her with such terror – Maelys was sure she’d
never seen anything like it, even as a child – but it did and she
couldn’t conceal it. What if an octopede had come upon her in the chimney? They
had definitely been there.

Vivimord gave a thin, satisfied smile. ‘I thought as much.
Get on the bed.’ Then he frowned. ‘No, not in that disgusting state. Go through
that door; you will find a bathing chamber. Clean yourself up and come back.’
He gestured and her bonds fell away.

She hobbled on numb feet for the door he was pointing to:
she had to get away. The squelching noises sounded behind her, but Vivimord
said sharply, ‘Stop, Phrune. You’re dead; you no longer feel
any
lusts.’

Phrune made a mewling gurgle. Jerking the door open, she
hurled herself through and banged it, feeling in the darkness for a catch or
bolt, but there was none. However her fingers touched a glassy plate which
began to glow faintly, as though the power that had once illuminated it was
almost gone.

She was in a small triangular room lined with polished pink
stone. It must once have looked magnificent, but all was badly stained by brown
seepage, and efflorescences of white and yellow crystals grew from the joins
between the tiles. It could not have been used in centuries. Centrally, a
tulip-shaped tub made from clear crystal rose from a stalk of the same material.
Water with a yellow tinge flowed over the sides and down into recesses at the
base; yellow concretions like button mushrooms had formed there and the room
had a musty, dusty smell.

Maelys dared not disobey Vivimord; besides, the itching was
almost unbearable. She didn’t undress, though: she took off her boots and
socks, climbed three crystal steps and was sliding into the tulip tub when the
door opened a fraction.

Vivimord’s voice said, ‘Don’t try anything. My guardian is
watching you.’ The panel brightened fractionally.

Maelys’s eyes were drawn upwards to the dimly illuminated
ceiling. A corded web stretched across it to a corner which lay in shadow,
apart from a pair of large, garnet coloured eyes, close together, and the tip
of one hook-shaped claw.

Muffling a cry, she crouched until the cool water was at
neck level and scrubbed furiously at her clothes and skin, trying to rid
herself of every remnant of dried slime. After a hasty glance at the octopede,
which hadn’t moved, she ducked her head and washed her face, surfaced like a
porpoise, checked on the watcher, then ducked again and raked her fingers
through her hair. She wasn’t game to lose sight of the octopede for more than a
few seconds. For such a flabby creature, the other one had been terrifyingly
fast.

How did Vivimord plan to catch Nish? It looked as though he
was planning a seduction, though Vivimord knew that Nish had rejected Maelys
months ago, and that he was still obsessed with Irisis, whose perfectly
preserved body was held in Jal-Nish’s Palace of Morrelune. Nish would do almost
anything to have her back, and what if Vivimord, whose Black Arts had
reanimated Phrune’s corpse, knew of a way to restore the dead to life? It was
horrible; sick; depraved; so what did that make Nish?

She reminded herself that, though Nish had been sorely
tempted more than once, he had done nothing about it,
yet
. Vivimord was the immediate problem, but Maelys didn’t have the
faintest idea of how to deal with him; he was too ruthless and clever. So why
was he playing out this seduction scene? Just to torment her? Hardly. Every
minute that passed meant a greater chance of discovery by Jal-Nish, so why not
simply seize Nish when he appeared? Could Vivimord be afraid of Flydd?

Then why show her the octopede? To ensure that she did what
she was told – and betray Nish? And she probably would. Vivimord had
found her weakness. She couldn’t bear to be at the mercy of such a creature,
its disgusting, warty limbs on her, its hook-claws dragging her to its fanged
mouth. She would agree to anything to get away from it.

 
NINE

Nish had no idea how Flydd was tracking Vivimord and
Maelys through the tunnels of Mistmurk Mountain, unless it was by smell.
Several times he got down on hands and knees to sniff at the floor, where Nish
noted an occasional greasy smear, and once a faint odour of rotten flesh,
though it didn’t tell him anything. Where they were going or what Flydd planned
to do when he got there was a mystery, though Vivimord with his powers restored
was almost as formidable an opponent as the God-Emperor. What could Flydd do,
with just enough Art to create light? Nish noticed he kept playing with the
crystal he’d taken from beneath the slab, rolling it back and forth between his
fingers or pressing it against his forehead, but if he was trying to draw upon
its power, it was not working.

Nish trudged along at the rear, enduring the fierce pain
from his partly healed hand; the healing process felt like clusters of spines
growing through inflamed flesh. His thumb, first two fingers and half the back
of his hand were covered in new skin, and so was his palm, though the remaining
two fingers were deeply burnt and he might still lose them.

‘I think this is it,’ Flydd whispered, loosening his knife
in its sheath but not drawing it. They had turned into a straight hall lined
with polished stone, smooth and cold to Nish’s fingertips. ‘We’ll go in
darkness now.’

‘What’s down there?’ said Colm.

‘Quiet.’ Flydd was staring fixedly along the hall.

Nish couldn’t hear a thing, though when he rested his head
against the wall for a moment, the stone had the subtlest vibration.

‘A great chamber lies at the end of this corridor,’ said
Flydd, ‘and it’s a place of power, though not one I know how to use. The
abyssal flame, the mother of all cursed flames, burns continuously here, fed by
a source deep in the roots of the mountain; it’s the reason Vivimord brought
Maelys here. With the mountain surrounded, he can’t get out without tapping a
mighty source of power to –
what’s
that
?’

‘I didn’t hear anything,’ said Nish.

‘Nor I,’ said Colm.

‘Perhaps I imagined it,’ said Flydd. ‘My new mind jumps all
over the place; I can’t always be sure whether I’m living in the moment or
remembering the past – or her past. Come on; Nish, stay close. Vivimord
wants you, remember.’

Everyone
wants me,
Nish thought, and Maelys too. I’m beginning to understand what she has gone
through these past months.

‘What does he hope to do with this mighty source of power?’
said Colm. ‘Open the shadow realm?’

‘
That
was a secret
known only to two scrutators,’ said Flydd. ‘The vile and vicious Chief
Scrutator Ghorr, may he lie rotting in the most infested pit of all, and
myself. Ghorr would have told no one before he died; he loved the power of his
solitary secrets too much. I feel sure that not even Jal-Nish or Vivimord know
how to enter it – directly, I mean.’

‘How else can it be entered?’

‘It’s rumoured that there was once a Charon portal here.
That’s one of the reasons I chose this place.’

Or the woman in red put it into your mind, not for our
betterment, Nish thought, though he didn’t dare say it.

‘What do you mean, a
portal
?’
said Colm.

‘A gate which allows one to travel instantly from one place
to another.’

‘Then open the damn thing and take us somewhere civilised,
as far away from the shadow realm as possible.’

‘I don’t know how to open it,
yet
,’ Flydd said. ‘And even in my prime I wouldn’t have had the
strength to open a portal sealed for centuries. However, its previous existence
would have left a weakness in the fabric of space here, which, even without my
special crystal, I hope to exploit to slip into the shadow realm. And then out
somewhere safe, as quickly as possible.’

‘But Vivimord –’

‘He’s a great mancer, and having recently been restored at
the cursed flame, he’ll be able to wield its power better than any living man.
He may be able to reopen the portal and carry Nish and Maelys beyond our reach;
that cannot be allowed to happen. If she does carry the first grandchild of the
God-Emperor, Vivimord would have a hold over him that would be impossible to
break, and an alliance between those two monsters must be prevented at all
costs.’

At the end of the corridor Flydd leaned on one of a tall
pair of doors until it opened a crack, and peered through. Nish made out a
distant whistling.

‘This is the chamber of the abyssal flame,’ whispered Flydd.
‘Prepare for battle, but don’t strike until I give the order.’