The Curse on the Chosen (The Song of the Tears Book 2) (24 page)

The next step was to solidify the portal entrance with them
both inside. Once that was done they would be safe – from everything
outside it, at least. Flydd made his way back to the obelisk and climbed one
step up its slope. Opening one of the chthonic fire flasks, he drew power from
it as he’d seen her do, fingertip to forehead. Agony! Mist formed around the
obelisk and drifted through the red glass spiral, for its walls were still
intangible. How was he to complete it? He didn’t know. He couldn’t think
straight for the pain boring into his skull.

Colm scrambled up the obelisk. ‘They’re nearly here.’

Flydd could see the jiggling lanterns from the corner of his
eye.

Colm sprang up to the tip, swinging his sword in a vertical
arc. Flydd jumped. A bladder-bat squealed as the blade went through one wing
and into a bladder filled with the floater gas that kept it aloft. The gas hissed
out; the creature’s other wing scraped down the side of the obelisk, then it
splashed into the mud, dead.

‘Thanks,’ said Flydd. ‘You’ll have to keep them off.’

‘At last there’s honest work for me to do.’

The implication being that mancery was dishonest work. After
today, Flydd couldn’t blame him for thinking it.

Phrune’s fingers tightened on Maelys’s wrist. She swung
around, striking at the corpse with her fists, useless though that was –
it was animated by Vivimord’s necromantic Arts and the only way to stop it was
to chop it into little pieces, but she was unarmed.

The abyssal flame sputtered, then changed from green to a
brilliant, frozen white. Maelys didn’t have time to wonder about the ominous
transformation; the light illuminated dead Phrune more starkly than sunlight,
and he was clad in rags through which his skin had the bleached grey of a
fish’s belly. His reek was overpowering now, and something white and slippery
dangled from his left hand: a long loop of intestine with a slip-knot at the end.

Phrune let out a slimy chuckle and began to pull her to him.
He was twice her weight and far stronger; if he got his arms around her that
would be the end. Maelys tried to wrench free but, though his palms had that
familiar oiliness, his fingers and thumb had locked around her wrist.

She had only one advantage; he was slow and lumbering, and
she was quick with life. Maelys yanked up a clump of reeds with her free hand
and smacked Phrune across the eyes with it. He blinked away the mud, focused
his empty eyes on her and gave a slow pull on her arm.

She jammed her feet against a ridge of baked mud and
strained backwards with all her weight, but wasn’t heavy enough to heave him
off balance. Phrune kept pulling, his lacerated mouth open in a deathly grin.
She threw herself forwards and dived between his legs before he could react.

She hadn’t broken his hold on her wrist, though, and it was
wrenched so badly that she thought the bones were going to break. She steadied
her wrist with her free hand, jerked Phrune’s arm between his legs and heaved
with all her might. His feet left the ground and she threw her shoulder against
him, toppling him onto his face.

He still wouldn’t let go, but Maelys fell with him, driving
her knees into his back and pushing him through a thin hard crust into liquid
mud, hitting him with her weight again and again until at last his fingers gave
enough for her to pull her throbbing wrist free. She jumped up and down on the
back of his head, forcing it into the mud as hard as it would go.

Nothing could stop Phrune, though, and when she saw his
hands clawing at the reeds and his knees drawing up, she leapt onto the firmer
ground next to the white flame, which had been baked hard by the abyssal
flame’s heat and was now freezing even harder.

Oh for a stout stick or a heavy rock, but no trees grew on
the plateau and the only rock was solid bedrock. Her one hope was the flame
itself. She backed towards the brink, the cold freezing her muddy clothes,
leaving a good pace between herself and the edge so she wouldn’t slip in. Would
Phrune recognise the danger? That depended on whether he had any intelligence
left or was just a corpse animated by his master’s Arts.

He rose slowly to his feet, dripping mud, and came at her.
Maelys moved along the rim so he would have to approach from the side, which
would give her the best chance of knocking him in. He could do the same to her,
of course, unless Phrune had something worse in mind.

He moved sideways so as to come at her head-on, which
suggested that there was some intelligence at work within him. She backed
around the rim, desperately trying to think of a way to finish him. He had
endless patience, but she had little time. Vivimord was probably attacking
Flydd right now.

The ground was uneven here, consisting of the hollows of
pools drained when the flame had burst up through them – some baked hard,
others with just a firm crust over deep, soft ooze – and the head-high
banks between the pools. She climbed the bank behind her, slid down the other side,
crossed the next dry pool and clambered up the bank after that, onto its edge.
Maelys was backing across it when she felt the ground crumbling under her feet.
The other side had been undermined and had fallen away, leaving a thin crust of
moss and earth with nothing supporting it.

She moved to the brink of the flame shaft, then jumped off
the undermined bank to the hard base of the pond, and waited. Shortly Phrune
clawed his way to the top, saw her below, and stopped. She moved backwards but
he remained where he was. Did he suspect a trick?

She took another step backwards, trying to stare at him
fearfully, which wasn’t hard. Alive or dead, Phrune was terrifying. Another
step.

He moved at last and his right foot came down on the
undermined section, which crumbled beneath him. Phrune toppled, fell to the
floor of the pond, but to her dismay landed solidly on his stubby feet. She ran
at him, put her hands against his chest and shoved as hard as she could.

He fell backwards towards the flame but, as he was going
over, one flailing hand caught her shirt and pulled her with him, and Maelys
was already off-balance. She dropped to her knees and jammed them into the
ground, praying that the fabric would give, but her shirt tore down to a seam
and it held.

He teetered on the brink, trying to pull himself towards
her, but Maelys could feel her knees slipping under his greater weight. He
swayed forwards, backwards, forwards again and with the recklessness of
desperation she propelled herself up, drove her head into his belly as hard as
she could, then threw herself backwards.

His insides made a disgusting sloshing noise and began to
slide out of his mouth, but his fingers relaxed on her shirt and he toppled
into the freezing white flame. She watched him fall, squinting against the
glare, until he was out of sight, surely burning to ash and gone forever.

Maelys’s heart was clattering and she could barely stand up,
but she had to get to the obelisk. Colm was halfway up it, swinging at a flock
of bladder-bats, while the obelisk was surrounded by long glassy red spirals.
Flydd’s shadow realm spell must be working after all.

She was heading for it when the flame gave a series of
belches and a transparent figure rose out of it. No, a series of identical
figures, five of them, each the image of dead Phrune. They swung around until
they formed a line, their ruined mouths opened in the same moment, and they
broke into silent laughter.

 
NINETEEN

Flydd was exhausted, as though all the power he’d used
so far had been drawn from his own bones. He felt quite hollowed out, yet still
the spiral had not solidified to protect them. Why not?
Was
Jal-Nish blocking him until he could get all his forces into
place?

Colm, who was balanced on the tip of the obelisk, drenched
in frozen blood and frosted fragments of bladder-bat, could barely hold his
sword arm up. The creatures kept coming, and above them six flappeters flew in
tight circles, waiting their chance. The advancing army was only a few hundred
paces away, struggling through the trackless swamp. Another few minutes and
they would be here.

‘If you want a fight, Jal-Nish, you’ll get one!’ Flydd
roared at the sky. ‘You were never my equal in the old days and you’re not
now.’

‘Don’t provoke him,’ Colm croaked. ‘It’s a hollow boast,
anyway, since you all ran away from him ten years ago.’

‘Do your own job and don’t tell me how to do mine.’

Colm propped himself up on his sword, momentarily, then
struck wearily at another bladder-bat.

‘I need more power,’ said Flydd. ‘More and more and more,
and curse the consequences.’

He staggered back to the freezing flame and thrust his blade
into it, praying that the metal could take the strain. The blade shrilled like
hot iron thrust into a quenching trough, and as he returned he could feel its
power dissolving the barrier that had been blocking him all this time. The
spiral arms, now full of trapped fog, were starting to solidify. The one
closest to the chthonic flame was almost set, though the other arms and the
centre were still open.

Flydd climbed partway up the obelisk, whose upper two-thirds
angled out the top of the dome. ‘Colm! Get inside.’

‘The flappeters are coming. I’ve got to hold them off.’

‘You can’t fight flappeters with a sword, and once the
spiral sets, you’ll be stuck outside.’

And so would Nish and Maelys, if they were still alive, but
it was fruitless agonising about that. If he and Colm got away, at least they
would have saved something from the fiasco, and given the God-Emperor a small
kick in the teeth.

Colm slid down the obelisk and jumped in. Flydd traced a
spiral in the air with the bent blade, and the arms began to set. The portal
spell was finally working.

The sky palace dropped sharply and the advancing army broke
into a run. Flydd laughed aloud. ‘You’re too late, God-Emperor!’

Now to open the way into the shadow realm. He called on more
power, until the white knife wailed. The chthonic flame doubled in height, and
redoubled, soaring a thousand spans into the heavens.

The spirals were setting like red crystal, the outside world
thinning. A jag of light stabbed down from the sky palace, striking the eastern
arm, but was reflected harmlessly away.

‘The God-Emperor trembles,’ Flydd gloated. ‘He’s terrified
of the chthonic flame, an unknown power to him; and afraid of what I might do
with it.’ He raised his fists to the sky, white knife in hand. ‘Be very afraid,
God-Emperor!’

‘Shut up!’ cried Colm. ‘You’re begging fate to strike us
down.’

‘He fears the strong, Colm, but he
despises
the weak.’

Through the dome the chthonic flame glowed white, searing
its way upwards as if to ice-weld the world of Santhenar to the endless void.
Huge flakes of snow began to fall.

‘Flydd?’ choked Colm, shuddering. ‘What have you done? It’s
out of control.’

‘It’ll have to burn itself out. I can’t stop it.’

‘Open the damned portal before the flame freezes us solid.’

‘I thought you didn’t want to go to the shadow realm?’

‘I don’t!’

‘And neither do I,’ Flydd muttered. ‘But I’d sooner die
there than give Jal-Nish the satisfaction.’ The portal was coming. He could
feel it, just out of reach, but he was still blocked from opening it.

Thump-crash
. Below
him, three soldiers pulled themselves up from the cavity at the base of the
obelisk and began to dig their way out from under the dome. Others were trying
to smash into the arms. They would fail but, if enough of them kept at it, and
Jal-Nish maintained his strikes, they must eventually break through.

The Imperial Militia began to close the ring around them.
Another booming cry rumbled down from the air palace.

‘ATTACK!’

Flydd tried again, expecting to be blocked, but
fsssshhhtttt
– a shadowy opening
began to form, though not in the centre of the spiral, where it should be. It
was at the end of the arm to his right, though he could not see it clearly. He
shivered and rubbed his eyes, his unease rising.

‘What is it now?’ said Colm.

‘The portal should have formed at the obelisk. Why has it
formed over there?’

Colm shrugged. ‘What does it matter, as long as it works?’

‘I don’t suppose it does,’ said Flydd. ‘Come on.’

The outside was lit by a series of bright flashes coming
down from the sky palace, and a tap-tapping sounded, as of a hammer on crystal.
Afraid that the spiral was going to shatter under Jal-Nish’s attack, he bolted
up the curving arm, which was thick with fog. The bottom of the arm was below
ground here, so he was running on mud and earth.

The arms curved around the obelisk twice, but it wasn’t
until he passed the terminus of another arm that he realised he’d gone up the
wrong arm of the spiral.

He pressed his nose to the wall. At the end of the next arm,
a clot of vapour was swirling in to a dark centre; it had to be the portal. He
felt an overwhelming rush of relief, until something moved on the far side of
it, human-shaped. Could it be the woman in red? It didn’t move like her.

‘Is that Jal-Nish?’ said Colm.

‘Don’t think so,’ Flydd grunted, now regretting his shouted
challenge. If Jal-Nish stood between him and the portal, he’d failed. He
couldn’t fight the God-Emperor.

The mist thickened until Flydd couldn’t see anything. But
surely Jal-Nish wouldn’t risk himself; he would have sent a powerful mancer to
block the way.

As he ran back to the centre, each of Jal-Nish’s blasts was
like hammer blows that shook the spiral, and it was growing hot from all that
expended power.

‘It can’t take much more, Colm. And neither can I.’