The Curse on the Chosen (The Song of the Tears Book 2) (58 page)

‘It still came too easily, Flydd, and you know it. If I’d
made a portal to the Nightland I’d have been crippled by aftersickness for
days, yet by all accounts you hardly suffered at all. You made another portal
only a couple of days later –’

‘A month had gone by when we returned to Santhenar,’ Flydd
snapped.

‘The only passing time that counts is the time of the place
where you spend it – the Nightland. Two days between portals, and no
aftersickness – it should not have been possible. And then you made a
third
portal from Dunnet. You ought to
be dead, yet you look better than I do. Why Flydd?’

‘Not now, damn you!’ Flydd could feel the pressure boiling
up in him. He wanted to strike out at Yggur. He didn’t want to consider that
the woman in red had changed him, might even have left part of herself inside
him, to control him at some future time. Instead, he directed his fury, and his
deep-seated fear of what she had done to him, into the chthonic fire webbing
its way across the wall of ice, to blast a way through it.

A boom shook the steps. Rotten, fire-eaten ice crumbled out
of the lower walls in several places and more Whelm scrambled in. Half the
prisoners fell down on the stairs in a wave that proceeded from top to bottom.

When the steam and flying ice had cleared, Flydd saw a neat
tube blasted through the ice wall in front of him, expanding outwards on the
far side.

‘We’re through!’ he roared. ‘Come on.’

He crawled in. Three Whelm guards lay on the far side,
crushed under the ice. One was still kicking.

‘And this,’ said Yggur, ‘if you need further evidence.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘The old Flydd could not have done what you just did, using
nothing more than cold fire. The woman in red has changed you, Flydd, and good
is not going to come of it.’

Flydd didn’t answer; it was too disturbing. He saw a square
staircase to the left, various rooms and corridors ahead and to the right.
‘Chissmoul, do we go up?’

She nodded. ‘We must. They’ll have taken the lower stair by
now.’

‘Where does this one lead?’

‘All the way to the top of the inner tower.’

‘Is there any way out from there?’

‘Yes, but we’d have to fight hundreds of Whelm to get to
it.’

‘Can we defend the top?’

She hesitated before answering. ‘I expect so … for a while.’

‘Then that’s what we’ll have to do. Come on.’

He ran for the steps and began to scramble up them. They
were very steep, and also speckled with chthonic fire. ‘Is the whole damned
place fire-eaten?’ he cried as his boot plunged through the tenth step into icy
water. Jagged ice tore at his calf as he pulled free.

‘Not yet, but the fire seems to be feeding on ice,’ said
Yggur. ‘And unless we can put it out, it’s not going to stop until it’s
consumed the entire tower.’

Flydd felt a chill of fear. ‘And what then?’

‘The moat water will stop it spreading any further,
fortunately. The Numinator won’t be pleased, though.’

‘That’s the least of my worries right now.’

Flydd stopped on the first landing, for Yggur was already
lagging behind, and Flangers was labouring. Colm and Chissmoul continued up out
of sight. Behind Flangers, the leading prisoners were pushing up, stumbling and
fearful. They were torn between an uncanny death at the mancers’ hands or a
brutal one from the Whelms’ jag-blades, and little to choose either way.

The floor rocked sideways, sliding Flydd and Yggur across
the landing and throwing most of the prisoners off their feet.

‘What was that?’ asked Flangers. He was as brave as any man
in the face of physical danger, but was not equipped to deal with the uncanny.

‘Felt like a foundation stone crumbling,’ said Yggur.

‘Is the inner tower going to fall?’

‘Not for a while,’ said Yggur. ‘Her bracelets are taking
every speck of power I have, to maintain her realm, and this ice is stronger
than brick or stone. Small breaches will heal themselves, for any liquid water
that forms will put that patch of fire out and then freeze, welding the ice
together again. Where it is rottenest, that part of the wall will collapse, but
the rest of the tower should stay together – for a time.’

‘Just long enough for us to get to the roof,’ Colm said
gloomily. ‘And then the inner tower will fall down.’

When they reached the top, Flydd echoed his despair. The
roof of the inner tower was flat and some fifty paces across, surrounded by a
chest-high wall of ice as clear as window glass. Three suspended aerial
walkways, equally spaced around the perimeter wall, ran across to a narrow
platform encircling the inside wall of the Tower of a Thousand Steps, which
curved around and soared above them like the inside of a gigantic cone. On the
far side of their roof, another stair ran down inside the inner tower.

‘We can’t defend the roof either,’ said Colm. ‘Not with five
ways for them to attack us.’

‘Flangers?’ said Flydd. ‘What do we do?’

‘Block the two stair wells,’ said Flangers. ‘Flydd, you’ll
have to do that. You too, Yggur. You’ve got to find the power somewhere, surr,’
Flangers added hastily, for mancers were notoriously short-tempered and quick
to take offence. ‘I’ll see if we can deal with the walkways.’

Flydd and Yggur headed for the second staircase, since the
one they’d climbed was choked with scrambling, desperate prisoners. ‘You do
it,’ said Yggur. ‘I’ve worked out how to hold back a little power for myself,
but I’m saving it for an emergency.’

Flydd raised an eyebrow. ‘And this isn’t?’

‘This is just a skirmish. The real battle is yet to come.’

Flydd drew power from a patch of white fire and concentrated
on the roof of the stairwell, several spans down. It was much harder to break
the ice this time, for it was more solid here and he felt hollowed out from
overusing his Art, but after much straining the blocks above the bend of the
stair separated and fell in.

‘I don’t think it’s blocked completely –’ Flydd
slumped to his knees, his head whirling and his stomach churning with
aftersickness.
She
was back in his
mind’s eye and she wanted something.

‘What’s the matter?’ said Yggur, splitting a block over and over,
making more spears.

‘I saw the woman in red again.’

‘What was she doing?’ Yggur rapped.

‘Trying to get through to me,’ Flydd said faintly, ‘but
she’s faded away.’

‘Good riddance!’ Yggur inspected the ice rubble below. ‘One
or two Whelm might still scramble through there, but they won’t find it easy to
fight on that shifting slope.’

‘Nor will our untrained prisoners with their brittle
spears.’

Yggur took an armload of ice spears up, then went down to
the fallen blocks to make more. Flydd headed across to Flangers, Chissmoul and
Colm, who were at the end of one of the aerial walkways. These consisted of a
series of ice planks frozen onto cables of clear, woven ice. There was no sign
of the enemy.

‘This ice must be spell-toughened,’ said Flangers, hacking
at a cable. ‘Not even a Whelm jag-blade will make an impression on it.’

‘It is,’ said Yggur, laying down another armload of spears,
‘and the tower draws upon my power from time to time, to bolster the cables
anew.’

‘What if you were to hold it back?’ said Chissmoul who,
having been a thapter pilot, understood the ways that power could be drawn, and
blocked.

‘I’m not sure that I can; the bracelets are still in
charge.’

‘Here come the Whelm!’ someone yelled.

Flydd peered over the edge. Far across, on the cone-shaped
inside wall of the Tower of a Thousand Steps, lines of Whelm were clambering up
a set of rungs to the platform that encircled the inside of the Tower of a
Thousand Steps. Once the Whelm reached the platform they could run around it to
the walkways, and attack across all three at once.

Without warning the roof of the inner tower swayed left and
right, then jerked downwards half a span, sending slow waves across the
suspended walkways and pulling their curves tighter.

‘Another course of the tower has crumbled,’ said Yggur.

‘It had better not fall any further,’ said Flydd.

Yggur, now shaking with aftersickness, added another armload
to his pile of ice spears. ‘Arm yourselves,’ he said hoarsely to the wide-eyed
prisoners, and they obeyed at once.

Yells and screams broke out behind them. The last of the
prisoners were coming up, closely followed by a pack of Whelm. A band of
prisoners tried to fend them off with ice spears, but the Whelm smashed the
spears with sideways sweeps of their jag-blades.

Flangers, leading a squad of spearmen, drove them down.
Flydd ran to their aid, knocking the useless defenders out of the way with his
shoulder and leaping down onto the top step. He’d worked out how to use the
jag-sword now. The elegant swordsmanship he’d learned from a master decades ago
was useless here; neither could he cut and thrust as he would normally do in
battle, for the jags caught on clothing and flesh, and it was difficult to pull
free.

The best way to use a jag-sword was as an edged bludgeon.
When swung hard enough it would shear through flesh and bone, and one blow was
normally enough to disable an opponent, or kill him.

A pair of Whelm lunged up the steps, and Flydd felt a spasm
of fear. Though he had the advantage of height and speed, it was difficult to
get a good swing going in the narrow stairwell. He hacked straight down at the
Whelm on the left, who ducked but left his sword upraised. Flydd’s blade struck
it with a clang and another flurry of sparks, and the jags caught. The Whelm held
Flydd’s sword; he couldn’t free it in time, and the second Whelm leapt up two
steps, raising his weapon for the blow that would cleave Flydd in two from
skull to navel.

It was a clever strategy, clearly much practised, and he had
no choice but to abandon his sword. He threw himself backwards but his heel
caught on the edge of the top step and he landed on his back on the roof,
winded.

The leading Whelm leapt up beside him and raised the
jag-blade high to skewer Flydd to the floor. He couldn’t get out of the way;
couldn’t move.

‘Stay down!’ Yggur roared, and pointed his left hand at the
tightly stretched ice cables at the far end of the nearest walk-way.

The Whelm stopped, staring, jag-sword upraised. Flydd heard
a shrill hiss as the woven ice fibres unravelled at high speed, then the cables
snapped and hurtled towards the inner tower, their wiry ends lashing about
furiously. The ice planks of the walkway were sent flying in all directions,
embedding themselves deeply in every surface and smashing down two prisoners
who had been slow to react.

Yggur dropped to the floor; an iron-hard cable end sang over
his head, and Flydd’s, slammed into the Whelm’s right cheek, tearing his face
off, then continued on its unstoppable way.

The Whelm fell backwards down the steps but his jag-blade
hit the roof, point first, between Flydd’s thighs, then toppled and thumped him
in the groin, chest and mouth so hard that tears sprang to his eyes.

The other Whelm was on his feet. Flydd spat out blood, sat
up and hefted the jag-sword. Swinging it sideways so hard that he wrenched his
back, he sent it spinning at the Whelm, who could not move quickly enough to
avoid it. It struck him in the belly and knocked him down half a dozen steps.

Flydd got up weakly, holding his groin, the pain coming in
waves so intense that he wanted to throw up. He could not look at the faceless
Whelm, who was crawling blindly up the steps, still trying to do his duty.
Thankfully, Flangers put the fellow out of his misery.

‘You’ll have to block the stairs, Flydd,’ said Yggur in a
faded voice. ‘I can do no more.’ He was on his hands and knees with his
forehead touching the floor.

‘I don’t have much left either.’ Flydd studied the layout of
the stairs, identifying its weak points as a matter of habit. ‘I’ll have to go
down. I can’t do it from here.’

‘They’ll have a clear view of you.’

Flydd shrugged. ‘See if you can do something about the other
two walkways.’

With the destruction of the first walkway, the inner tower
had taken on a list, and walking across the sloping, slippery ice was difficult
and dangerous. Flydd slid down the sloping stairs, trying to make sense of what
he’d heard earlier. Had the Numinator opened a portal to the Nightland? And who
had Maelys met there? The questions were unanswerable, but they raised a more
urgent one. What would the Numinator do when she returned and saw the
destruction? Would she call her Whelm off? The main tower looked solid but the
inner one was badly damaged and, without being strengthened with the Art, must
fail. Its collapse would bury the hall of the bloodline registers and all those
unpleasantly suggestive bodies, skeletons and malformed creatures in jars,
ruining her lifetime’s work.

He hobbled down the steps until he was directly below the
weakest point he’d identified in the stair roof. The Whelm who had fallen lay
dead with a broken neck, and others were scattered below him, stuck with ice
spears. Flydd clutched at his groin, trying to ease the pain, then reached
within himself to draw power one more time. It was harder than ever now; he
couldn’t concentrate, and he could hear the leathery feet of more Whelm padding
up the stairs.

Now! He drew power hard, directing it into the ice above him
which, being almost untouched by chthonic fire, was as hard as adamant. His
power made no impression on it. He tried again, but again saw the woman in red,
dimly as though through a transparent barrier. Her arms were outstretched
pleadingly, but what did she want? For him to let her through?

As if he was going to add to their troubles by calling her.
Every muscle ached from overuse of power, and every bone. He had taken far more
from himself than any mancer should have, and he was going to pay for it.