The Destiny of the Dead (The Song of the Tears Book 3) (75 page)

Maelys couldn’t move; she had lost control of her legs. She
looked into his eyes, not understanding even when he held out his arms to her.
She started, blushed, then went slowly to him.

‘I heard what you did,’ Nish said, embracing her and
stroking her dusty hair. ‘Going into the shadow realm, all alone – it was
the bravest thing.’ He kissed her on the tip of her nose.

Maelys didn’t know what to think. ‘Almost as brave as flying
up there to try and seal the void.’

‘Try!’ he cried in mock outrage, taking a step backwards but
still holding her by the shoulders. ‘We
did
seal the void. It’s over – look out!’

He whirled her out of the way as the ground groaned and a
finger-wide crevice snaked out from Morrelune, almost under their feet.

‘It doesn’t go deep,’ said Maelys, too distracted to worry
about anything outside of them. ‘Nish –’

She wanted to tell him about the baby, but was afraid to.
The revelation was too new, too raw, and she had not come to terms with it
herself. And also, she was afraid of how he would react.

The ground kept shaking and they moved away from the edge of
the pit. Rock tore deep underground, and clouds of dust boiled up on the other
side of the palace.

They scrambled onto a boulder to see what was happening.
‘That crevice is
huge
,’ said Nish,
pointing to a broad crack that was zipping across the plain towards the
underground prison, half a league away. He and Maelys stared at each other, the
realisation taking a while to sink in. ‘Mazurhize could collapse as well.’

‘And my family are in there,’ cried Maelys. Now, finally,
she could go to them, but how could she race the crevice? ‘At least, I hope they
are …’ She set off at a run.

‘This way,’ called Nish. ‘It’s quicker.’

He scrambled up the side of the sky-galleon. Maelys climbed
the rope ladder. ‘M’lainte isn’t here,’ said Nish, looking around, ‘and neither
is Tiaan.’

‘I saw Chissmoul a minute ago,’ said Maelys. She yelled,
‘Chissmoul?’

‘What?’ She was sitting glumly on the ground on the other
side of the sky-galleon, staring at her feet. Chissmoul had been called to fly
earlier, but she had not heard the call, and now it was too late. The battle was
over and she might never fly again.

‘Pilot!’ yelled Maelys. ‘We need you.’

Chissmoul bounded to her feet and scrambled up the rope
ladder. ‘Where to?’

‘Mazurhize, and make it snappy.’

The sky-galleon hurtled away, racing the crevice across the
plain. After overtaking it halfway, Chissmoul landed near the dark, grimy steps
that led down to the prison.

‘Get clear, in case it falls in,’ said Nish. ‘We won’t be
long.
I hope
.’

The prison was dark save for a few guttering lanterns, for
the guards had fled hours ago. The God-Emperor’s silent watchers – the
wisp-watchers, loop-listeners and snoop-sniffers which, when linked to the
tears, could detect a creeping mouse in darkness – hung still and
lifeless.

Nish ripped two lanterns off the wall, handed one to Maelys
and they ran down the wet steps into the reeking gloom, letting the prisoners
out as they went. There weren’t as many as she would have thought. Most of the
cells were empty and there was no sign of her family. They must be dead.

‘What a horrible place,’ she said, pressing up against him.
‘Do – do you mind if I hold your hand?’

’I don’t mind at all. You can’t imagine the memories
Mazurhize brings back.’

The smoky lantern glasses allowed out only a feeble brown
light which made the prison look even more grimy and oppressive. It was
miserably cold and the smell grew worse the further they descended.

They reached the lowest level, the ninth, which consisted of
a short corridor leading to a single cell whose large brass key hung from a
hook. She took it. After splashing through festering sullage, they approached
the cell which had been Nish’s home for ten years.

‘You spent
ten years
down here?’ Maelys said, crushing his hand. ‘I wonder that you didn’t go mad.’

‘There were times I thought I had.’ Nish shuddered. ‘It’s as
if no time has passed since my escape,’ he whispered. ‘I might be being led in
now to begin my sentence. Go on.’

Maelys had been hanging back, afraid to look in, but she
swallowed and peered around the edge of the cell. In the dim lantern light she
could just make out something huddled against the wall at the far side of the
cell. Her hand shook as she turned the key.

‘They look dead, Nish.’

‘So did I, half the time I spent in there. Be brave.’

She crept in, appalled at the smell, which was far worse
than it had been in the corridor. The stench was distantly familiar, for Nish
had smelled just like this when she had helped him to escape last autumn.

Something moved on the bench and Maelys, thinking about the
shadow realm, put her hand over her mouth. What horror was she going to
discover?

A tall, bony figure sat up stiffly, focussed on her and
snapped, ‘You took your time, girl. You always were a lazy slattern.’

The woman was tall and skinny with an eagle’s beak of a nose
– Aunt Haga. Trust her to survive – she had always been the tough
one. Maelys threw her arms around her aunt, overcome to realise that at least
one of her family had survived, sour and cranky though Haga was.

‘Get off!’ said Haga, pushing her away. ‘What’s the matter
with you?’

Maelys turned to the crumpled figures in the corner. ‘Are
they …?’

‘Your mother died five days ago and they’ve taken her body
out,’ said Haga briskly. ‘Lyma always was the weakest.’

Tears pricked at Maelys’s eyes. Her poor mother had never
recovered from the destruction of Nifferlin Manor and the dispersal of her
clan, and the loss of Maelys’s father had broken her. It was a wonder she had
lasted this long.

‘What about Bugi?’

‘
Aunt
Bugi!’ said
Haga, slapping her face. ‘You may have been swanning around the world with all
manner of villains and reprobates, but you’re not yet of age. You will show
respect, girl!’

Maelys met Nish’s eyes, and he looked shocked at her
reception, but she could have hugged Aunt Haga for joy. The world hadn’t been
completely torn apart after all – Haga was the same cranky old martinet
she had always been, and Maelys didn’t want her to change one iota. Haga
was
Clan Nifferlin now, and Nifferlin
survived!

‘Bugi passed this morning,’ said Haga. ‘Seneschal Vomix
tortured her cruelly after we were taken, and she was glad to go in the end,
but Fyllis clings to life. She might be saved, if you know a good healer …’

Vomix again! He was the cause of all the clan’s misfortunes,
and it had all come about because of a thoughtless remark Maelys had made when
passing him on the road, as a child. No wonder her mother and aunts had treated
her so badly and lavished all their love on Fyllis.

‘I know a very good healer,’ said Maelys. ‘The best there
is.’

She bent over Fyllis, who lay in the filthy straw, panting,
soiled, and terribly thin. Her eyes were dull and empty; a thin band, studded
with jewelled knobs, encircled her forehead. ‘What’s this?’ said Maelys.

‘The scriers put it there to stop her from using her gift,’
said Haga. ‘It’s linked to the wisp-watchers and can’t be removed.’

‘The God-Emperor is dead, and so are the wisp-watchers,’
said Maelys, easing the band away and tossing it into the corner. It had been
on so long that Fyllis’s brow was scarred underneath.

Fyllis’s eyes sprang open. ‘Big sister,’ she said softly. ‘I
knew you’d come,’ and fell asleep.

Maelys wept.

 
FIFTY

The prison began shaking as Maelys carried Fyllis up.
Nish came behind bearing the body of Aunt Bugi, and Haga hobbled up the stairs
by herself, refusing all offers of aid. They gained the sky-galleon as the
broadening crevices approached Mazurhize, and lifted off without looking back.

‘I never want to see this place again,’ cried Maelys,
sitting on a bench beside her sleeping sister and stroking her filthy blonde
hair.

‘What
do
you
want?’ Nish said quietly, watching her from the corner of his eye and wondering
what she was going to do next, though he had a feeling he knew. And the worst
of it was, he had nothing to offer her – at least, nothing she would
value above Nifferlin.

‘Just to bathe the stink of Mazurhize away and go home,’ she
said. ‘I’ve got to have a home
now
.’

‘I understand. You have your family to look after.’

She looked as though she was going to say something
important then, oddly, Maelys blushed. ‘My family, yes. But …’

‘What is it?’

‘They’ll never be safe while Vomix survives. He’ll destroy
them just to make me suffer. I’m really afraid of him, Nish; so afraid that
I’ve got to go after him. I couldn’t bear to think of him out there, just
waiting for the chance –’

‘You don’t have to worry about Vomix ever again.’

She turned, clutching his bloodstained shirt with both hands
and looking into his eyes. ‘Are you sure? Is he –?’ The sudden relief in
her eyes was replaced by doubt. ‘He’s slimy as an eel, Nish. He can survive
anything.’

‘Not this time. We spotted him from the sky-galleon on the
way down from sealing the void. His personal guard fled down the ridge below
Mazurhize but they were ambushed by a troop of atatusk and wiped out. Vomix got
away and ran for his life through the woodland with a handful of his officers
– abandoning his men yet again.’

Nish shook his head in disgust. ‘How could Father have
raised a man like him to high office? We hunted him from the air for half an
hour, dropping flares to light the way, but with all the trees we couldn’t get
close enough to corner him. Then Tiaan spotted a band of those lyrinx-like
hunters; the ones that came through the opening first. They were just over the
hill, and she drove Vomix towards them, letting him think he was getting away.’

‘I hope they ate him,’ Maelys said fiercely.

‘You don’t feel as though you should forgive your enemies,’
Nish teased, ‘now they’ve been defeated?’

‘Not after what he did to my clan. Vomix hasn’t got a single
redeeming feature.’

‘He certainly hasn’t now. The hunters pulled down his
officers one by one and left them lying where they fell, but they held Vomix
down and ate him from the feet up, while he was still alive. He threatened
them, begged them, then wept and whined like the cur he is when he finally
realised that there was no way out, but it made no difference. It wasn’t a
pleasant way to go.’

‘But he’s definitely dead?’ Maelys was still holding him.
‘We thought he was dead before, yet he came back.’

This was one gift Nish could give her – he could
relieve her of the burden of Vomix forever. ‘Had he survived, we would have
finished him off, but I watched until the last gulp. He’s dead and gone, Maelys.
There won’t be any tombstone for Vomix, just a stinking pile of manure between
the rocks.’

She sagged against him. ‘Then we’ve won; we’ve finally won.’

‘Yes,’ said Nish as they landed. ‘It’s over.’

He helped her to climb down with Fyllis, then added quietly,
‘but at a terrible cost. Only ten of my faithful Gendrigorean militia are left,
of the five hundred I set out with – and they never wanted to fight in
the first place.’ He shook his head at the futility of war. ‘I talked them into
it.’

They weren’t the only losses; far from it. With the
last of the invaders mopped up, the allies gathered on the upthrust boulders
between the Sacred Lake and sunken Morrelune to count the grim cost of the day
and night.

Garthor had fallen, and more than half of his thousand
Aachim with him. The red-haired Aachim of Clan Elienor had fared even worse,
losing three-quarters of their number in less than an hour when several large
troops of atatusk had come down right in the middle of them, though Yrael had
survived.

The Faellem had lost only a quarter of their three hundred
and fifty, but both Galgilliel and Lainor were among them, and, being a small
and slight people, many more had been badly injured.

The Whelm had also suffered grievously; of their original
eighty, only seven remained and none were unscathed for, though they were
doughty and tireless fighters, they were slow and awkward compared to their
opponents.

‘More than two hundred of my people have fallen,’ said Ryll,
who was haggard and bloodstained. His armoured skin flickered white and grey,
the colours of unbearable grief. ‘Almost half. And Liett …’ His deep voice
cracked. ‘My one, my only Liett will soon join her ancestors.’

Nish had been afraid of that. It seemed impossible that
Liett, who had always been so magnificent, so brave and bold and full of life, could
be dying. And yet the lyrinx, for all their toughness, were as mortal as any
other species. ‘Is there nothing that can be done for her?’

‘Our healers have been working on her since I brought her
down,’ said Ryll, ‘and I was by her side the whole time, but her belly wounds
are too many and too deep. The mancer who speared her must also have damaged
her inside. I have little hope now.’ He bowed and withdrew.

After the toll of battle had been completed, everyone stood
in silence for ten minutes, remembering their dead. Nish tried to count his
own, from the time when Fyllis had taken him out of Mazurhize, but the number
was too great.

The faces flashed through his inner eye: hundreds of the
Defiance killed in that fruitless battle with his father’s army; faithful Zham,
that gentle giant at the top of Mistmurk; more than three hundred men and women
of the militia he’d fought beside at Blisterbone Pass, Taranta, the monastery,
and since; and half of Yulla’s hundred; not to mention wild, rebellious, beautiful,
brave and loving Liett. He remembered all the faces, but he could not always
put a name to them, and that was the worst of all.