The Destiny of the Dead (The Song of the Tears Book 3) (66 page)

There was no sign of the injuries Phrune had suffered when
she’d stuffed her taphloid into his open mouth, apart from his swollen, torn
and blistered lips. Nor, thankfully, of the intestines that had been hanging
out for most of the time that dead Phrune had hunted her.

‘Where’s Vivimord?’ she asked, looking over her shoulder.

Her voice sounded higher in the shadow realm, almost shrill.
The other Phrunes were not in sight, though she could see spirits everywhere
now; the levels below her were thick with them, all flitting and fluttering as
only the dis-embodied could.

‘Around,’ said Phrune vaguely. ‘Don’t you worry about him.
I’m going to look after you.’

If she used the knoblaggie, it would probably shield her
from this Phrune, but would there be anything left for the other four? No,
Klarm had said it would only work once, and she hadn’t yet gained what she came
for.

‘I need to talk to Vivimord. It’s urgent.’

Phrune let out one of those incongruous giggles that had
always set her teeth on edge. ‘My master is a busy man.’

‘Here?’ she cried. ‘How can he be?’

‘Vivimord wants out,’ Phrune said sourly, ‘and he knows
there must be a way.’ His red lips snapped shut as if he’d said more than his
master would have liked. ‘I won’t be bothering him, Maelys. As if I’d do you
any favours.’

He drifted towards her, and from the corners of her eyes
Maelys saw that the other four Phrunes were also converging on her. She gripped
the knoblaggie hard; she didn’t know if spirits could be harmed in the shadow
realm, but live people could – Flydd had talked about the dangers during
their attempts to escape from Mistmurk Mountain. And if
he
had been afraid, there was much to be afraid of.

‘Vivimord?’ she shouted. ‘Where are you? The Phrunes won’t
let me talk to you.’

The Phrunes clapped their hands over their ears, grimacing.
When Phrune had been alive, she remembered, shrill sounds had hurt his ears,
and her voice was much higher here than in the real world …

‘I’ll scream,’ said Maelys, taking a deep breath and leaning
towards him. ‘Right in your ears!’

‘Oh, very well!’ the first Phrune snapped. ‘It’ll be nearly
as much fun watching the master deal with you.’

Could Phrune be trusted? Certainly not. Was he planning an
ambush? Undoubtedly, if he thought he could get away with it, so she had to be
on her guard. She followed after his flitting spirit forms, finding it hard to
keep up; the five Phrunes had to keep stopping for her. Eventually they
spiralled through a cloud and emerged above an amphitheatre where Vivimord
stood on the stage addressing an audience.

He was a very tall spirit with long black hair, black eyes
and a thin, hooked nose, and every eye was drawn to him, for he was a
charismatic zealot who could sway multitudes with his oratory.

At sight of the flying Phrunes, Vivimord’s hard mouth curved
down in annoyance, until they all pointed at Maelys. He nodded, concluded his
address, bowed to his audience and drifted up towards her, showing his teeth.

‘I hoped to see you here before too long,’ he said, ‘though
I did not expect the added pleasure that you would still be alive.’

‘I need your help,’ said Maelys.

‘The only assistance you’ll be getting from me will be to join
us permanently.’ Vivimord’s hand slipped to the knife on his belt.

‘Wait!’ said Maelys desperately. ‘Do you know what’s going
on at Morrelune?’

He drew the knife and tested it by cutting his thumb off.
The spirit matter hardly bled at all, and when he stuck it back onto the stump,
his thumb wiggled just as naturally as his fingers. ‘A little. I can’t see
clearly into the material planes yet.’

‘Stilkeen has opened the void and, if it can’t soon be
closed, it will be the end of the world. You once said how much you loved
Santhenar, so what matters most to you – revenge on me, or the world’s
fate?’

‘I care less about it now than I did while I was alive,’
Vivimord said. ‘But you’re right; I do love my world and would not see it
harmed – especially as I still hope to return to it. What do you want
from me, Maelys, and why should I help you?’

‘I’ve got to find Nadiril the Librarian.’

‘What for?’

She looked over her shoulder, instinctively, then lowered
her voice. ‘Because I’m told that he may know Stilkeen’s weakness. We don’t
believe it will go away quietly, even if it does get the pure chthonic fire it
needs to bind its physical and spirit aspects together. We’re looking for a way
to drive it away, or even kill it.’

His dark eyes weighed her; he thrust the point of his knife
into his tenebrous thigh again and again, until an ectoplasmic fluid spurted
out. He caught it in a chalice and swallowed it again.

‘I don’t think a
being
can be killed,’ said Vivimord. ‘But Nadiril knows more than I do. Come this way.’

He took hold of her arm with fingers that had a tight,
chilly clasp, like a frozen tourniquet. This time they did not float or fly,
but appeared to skip in and out of existence. Maelys felt as though they were
covering great distances, if distance had any meaning in the shadow realm.

Vivimord stopped suddenly, dropped into a multi-coloured
layer of mist then through it into a space shaped like an enormous stone box,
where a tremendously ancient spirit sat perched on a stool rather like the one
Lilis had used in the Great Library, perusing a scroll.

He resembled a dying stork, Maelys thought, for he was
long-limbed and had a thin and sharply arching nose. His limbs were no more
than bone and sinew though his skin wasn’t saggy, but rather was stretched tightly
across the angular cheek-and jaw-bones. His skull was a high, bald dome, the
skin there blotchy and flaking. A few wisps of white hair clung to the sides of
his head and his eyes were clouded as if blind – and yet he had been
reading. Did he read via the Art?

The old man looked up at Maelys and smiled. ‘Hello, a
beautiful,
live
young woman.’ His
voice was faint and whispery. ‘Have you come to visit me? Goody.’

‘Hello,’ said Maelys. ‘You must be Nadiril. I’m Maelys. I
was at the Great Library recently, consulting Lilis.’

Nadiril smiled fondly. ‘My little protégée, and the finest
librarian I ever taught. How is she?’

‘Very well. She has recently retired.’ Maelys told him the
tale, briefly, and how Lilis, Yulla and M’lainte had turned up just in time with
the sky-galleon.

‘
Three Reckless Old
Ladies
?’ Nadiril said delightedly. ‘Capital, capital! One should always
retire before it’s time; I went on far too long. But live people don’t risk the
shadow realm for idle conversation. You’ve come to consult me about some
weighty matter.’

Maelys explained their situation and what she was looking
for.

The clouded eyes never left her face and she gained the
impression that he could see her clearly. ‘So old Yggur is still going, two
centuries after my death?’ said Nadiril. ‘Who would have thought it? And Kandor
was his father? Why did that never occur to me?

‘Ah yes, your question,’ he added as Maelys stirred. ‘Time
is pressing and you’re rightly impatient with an old man’s meandering mind.’

‘Er …’ said Maelys. He seemed such a nice old fellow and she
did not want to trouble him.

‘Get on with it,’ snapped Vivimord. ‘She has a date.’ He
tested the knife blade on his other thumb.

Nadiril ignored him. ‘I could not have answered your
question before I came to the shadow realm, Maelys, but since I’ve been here
I’ve kept my eyes and ears open … in a manner of speaking.’ He laughed wispily.
‘Stilkeen’s revenants are silly, heedless creatures, all pleasure and no
prudence. They give no thought to the future; it’s no wonder Stilkeen keeps
them here.’

‘I didn’t know they were
kept
here,’ said Vivimord, suddenly attentive.

‘Of course they are,’ said Nadiril. ‘In Stilkeen’s proper
state it is almost invulnerable, because it can shift quickly to other aspects
and planes where few if any enemies can follow.

‘And besides, being a
being
,’
he smiled at the little word-play, ‘it can’t be killed save by another higher
power. However, severed from its revenants as it is now, it has a weakness. It
is almost invulnerable to the most powerful mortals, but its revenants are only
safe in the shadow realm, or when they are united with Stilkeen by chthonic
fire. If they leave this realm,
unbound
,
there is one single way that they can be harmed – indeed, destroyed
completely.’

‘How?’ said Maelys, finding it hard to breathe. This was the
answer everyone had been searching for. Dare she try to destroy even part of a
being?

‘Unfortunately, I haven’t learned that,’ said Nadiril with a
wry smile.

‘But … have you got any idea?’

‘I’m afraid not. You’ll have to work it out yourself.’ His
clouded eyes closed, his head nodded, and he appeared to doze for a few
seconds, before opening his eyes again.

‘However, out in the real world, their senses fail them; the
revenants are blind and they can barely hear, so you may be able to trick them.
And if you should succeed, and they
are
destroyed, I believe that Stilkeen would be so hurt by their destruction that
it would not be seen again in the physical worlds for a goodly fraction of
eternity.’

 
FORTY-FOUR

‘We’ve got to do something or the atatusk are going to
run right over the top of us,’ Nish said to Ryll when they met during a
temporary lull in the fighting, twenty minutes later.

‘We’ve done well to hold them back,’ said Ryll, whose chest
and right arm were covered in atatusk blood of a brilliant chromium green.
‘They’re the mightiest foe we ever encountered in the void, but they’re not as
comfortable on this heavy world. We’re tiring them.’

‘Not quickly enough.’

The atatusk were brilliant, instinctive fighters who seemed
to anticipate every stroke of their opponents, and they could take even more
punishment than the armoured lyrinx, for the blubbery layer under their grey
skin could not only absorb mighty blows, but was self-healing. At least five hundred
men lay dead already, most from Vomix’s army fortunately, plus many lyrinx, and
the atatusk were coming out of the void faster than they were being killed.

Ryll began cleaning the claws of his right hand with the
point of a yellow atatusk tusk. It was as long as Nish’s forearm and greenly
bloody on the thick end, where it had been torn from the jaw.

The lyrinx were as civilised as old humans, Nish mused, but
sometimes it was hard to keep that in mind. ‘Do you know what I hate most about
the atatusk?’

Ryll raised a scaly eyebrow.

‘It’s their contempt for us old humans,’ said Nish. ‘They
do
think of us as grubs, vermin to be
stamped on. They assume we’re feeble, cowardly creatures who will run away.’

Ryll made a peculiar coughing bark behind his hand, then
turned aside hastily.

‘What’s the matter?’ said Nish. ‘You – you’re laughing
at me!’

‘You used to think of
us
as vermin,’ said Ryll, still smiling.

Lyrinx smiles showed hundreds of teeth and took a lot of
getting used to, for their mouths were big enough to bite off a human head.
However Nish had known Ryll a long time and, even after ten years, had not
forgotten how to read his relatively immobile features. Ryll was vastly amused.

‘Sorry,’ said Nish. ‘We were ignorant in the olden days. We
hadn’t seen the humanity inside you.’

‘That’s all right,’ said Ryll. ‘We also thought of you as
pink squirming grubs with useless teeth and no claws.’ He laughed thunderously.

Nish thumped him in the chest, which was like punching the
trunk of a tree. Ryll retracted his long, wickedly sharp talons, then extended
them again towards Nish’s cheek. It was a fiercely friendly gesture, but these
very claws had once laid open his father’s face in terrible wounds that had
never healed, and Nish’s smile faded.

‘We can’t beat them, can we?’ he said, surveying the
battlefield again.

‘Not unless you can stop them coming out of the void.’ Ryll
nodded up towards the opening. ‘There could be millions of atatusk up there;
probably are.’

Millions! A few hundred had come through so far and they
were wreaking ruin upon the surrounding armies. ‘Maybe we should have a go at
sealing the opening,’ Nish said, expecting Ryll to laugh the idea down.

‘Maybe we should,’ Ryll replied, ‘though I wouldn’t want to
send my fliers up there.’ Jagged colours flickered chameleon-like across his
chest and throat, signifying his unease. ‘The atatusk have always had our
measure in the air.’

‘But they don’t fly,’ said Nish. ‘Do they?’

‘No, they can’t fly, yet they have a way of bringing us
down. On heavy worlds like Santhenar, most of our fliers have to use mancery to
stay aloft –’

‘I remember,’ said Nish. Ryll, born without wings, had been
considered a misfit, though he had risen above that prejudice to lead the
lyrinx nation. ‘How do they do it?’

‘We don’t know. Atatusk aren’t even great mancers.’

‘Flydd might know, but I don’t see him anywhere.’ He looked
around and saw the sky-galleon hovering not far away. ‘I’ll ask M’lainte
–’

‘Isn’t she a trifle … er, venerable?’ said Ryll.

‘You mean old?’ said Nish as they strode towards the sky
galleon, which had settled on the plain while Lilis scurried around, collecting
fallen spears for reuse.

The fighting had swept across this area half an hour ago and
the paving was strewn with bodies – here an atatusk, practically cut in
half, surrounded by a halo of human bodies, there a slight, golden-skinned
Faellem man without a mark on him; further on were three dead Aachim, all with
red hair, and another atatusk, this one on its back with five spears sticking up
from its round grey torso.