The Fate of the Fallen (The Song of the Tears Book 1) (36 page)

Phrune was pulling the zealot away. ‘Master, Master, what
are you doing? Come away with me; allow me to soothe your torments and slake
your needs.’

Monkshart knocked him flying. ‘Not now, Phrune!’ He swayed,
then with a wrench managed to take control of himself. He walked around them in
a stiff-legged circle, thumping his thighs with his fists, before coming back
and jerking Nish to his feet.

‘Forgive me, Deliverer. I don’t know what happened there.
It’s the maze, the cursed maze. Why did you throw away the phial? You must have
known we’d need it again.’

Nish felt like a stupid schoolboy. ‘I wasn’t thinking, save
of Maelys left to die.’

‘Another sign,’ Phrune said mockingly. ‘He’s a false
Deliverer; a fool.’

Monkshart was quite calm now. He quelled Phrune with a stare
before turning back to Nish, looking troubled. ‘I hope you threw the phial hard
into the maze where our enemies won’t find it, Deliverer. For if they do …’

How could he have been so stupid? ‘I – I just tossed
it to the side,’ Nish stammered. ‘But I heard it crack.’

Monkshart’s eyes flashed again; his fists opened and closed.
The pale gloves were torn across the knuckles. ‘Vomix will find it and he’ll
recover every drop. There was enough left to treat a squad of soldiers.’

‘You said there was only sufficient for half a dozen
people!’

‘A necessary lie. Your path to victory will be filled with
them, Deliverer. We can’t cumber ourselves with the useless on the way or we’ll
never get there.’

‘Those villagers were ordinary, decent human beings! People
who’ve supported you all the way.’

‘And they gave their lives so we could get away, which is
why they were there. Come on. We must make the best we can from this mess, though
I don’t doubt Vomix’s troops will be on us within the hour.’

 
TWENTY-SIX

Maelys was woken by shouting so loud that it hurt her
ears. A dull ache throbbed behind her temples, her back felt bruised and
something sharp was sticking into her side. She opened her eyes, sending spasms
of pain jagging through her head.

It was still dark, but she wasn’t in her bed or even inside
the crater, for above her she caught a glimpse of stars through rushing cloud,
and in the distance she made out the outline of a cottage. As she tried to sit
up, such a spear of pain went through her head that she let out a gasp. What
was she doing in the village? She remembered coming up from the pit, then the
confrontation with Monkshart and, vaguely, sipping liqueur from a goblet. Later
Nish had been carrying her to bed. She didn’t recall anything else.

A cold breeze whirled across her bare skin. What was going
on? Her gown was up around her neck. She was naked underneath it and she
tingled all over, as if prickly fingers had been trailed up and down her body.
She jerked it down, feeling the hot blood flood to her face.

The shouting grew louder; she made out battle cries, the
clash of weapons and shrieks of agony. There was a strange taste in her mouth
– no, an absence of taste; her tongue felt numb. Had she been drugged?
Her thoughts came laboriously.

It was cold and drizzling. Maelys was wiping her face on her
sleeve when she caught a lingering, sweetly oily odour there, masking something
less pleasant – Phrune! He must have drugged her liqueur, sneaked into
her room afterwards and brought her up here to molest. And then, left her to
die.

A dream fragment rose up, unbidden. An abandoned stone hut,
an odd, meaty smell like a butcher’s stall, and a plump shadow bending over a
vat. No, it was a cauldron warmed by a handful of coals in a brass brazier, and
the figure was hooking something out of it, tissue-thin and dripping, checking
it with his fingers then lowering it below the oily surface again.

The figure was disguised, perhaps by some kind of illusion,
but Maelys knew who it was by the way he moved, and his smell. Phrune looked
over his shoulder at her, the look of a jackal, then returned to the spell he
was casting …

Later he’d knelt beside her, and ever so slowly drawn up her
gown to expose her upper body. In the paralysis of the dream Maelys couldn’t
move to stop him. His face was in shadow but she could hear the distinctive
sound of his tongue on his lips. He stroked her bare belly with one hand while
with the other he was making an odd rasping noise, flicking the blade of a
stiletto with his thumb. He touched the tip of the blade to her upper lip and
giggled as she tried to shrink away.

Maelys managed to shake her head. Phrune lifted the knife,
fastidiously, then held her jaw and made a small, careful cut at the top of her
upper lip. Thick, shiny saliva beaded on his lower lip – he was drooling
in anticipation. Maelys screamed, he reared back on his heels and she lost the
nightmare, thankfully.

A rain of arrows rattled against stone roofs and walls.
Someone cried out to her left. Maelys dragged herself into the shelter of the
wall and managed to sit up. Her top lip was tingling. She felt along it,
winced, then had to hold onto the wall at the sick realisation that followed.
It hadn’t been a dream – her lip was swollen and a thin scab extended
along it, exactly where Phrune had run the tip of the knife.

She’d been quite wrong about him. His eyes hadn’t been
roving over her in a lustful way at all. Phrune wasn’t a rapist or a pervert;
he was a killer. Having the power of life and death over others, and using it,
was what gave him his gratification. He’d been imagining the pleasure of her
pain when he lifted her skin off in one piece, so as to please his master with
the finest body-glove he’d ever had.

Maelys was suddenly struck by the gaunt face of the young
woman, Ganni, who had appealed to Monkshart as they’d entered the village.

‘Surr,’ Ganni had wept, ‘it came again last night. It took
Milli and we can’t find her anywhere. I’m so afraid.’

And Monkshart had brushed her off. ‘Phrune will deal with
it.’

No wonder the villagers looked so haunted. They were trapped
here by Monkshart’s halo of protection and mesmerised by his tales of the
Deliverer coming to save them, yet whenever Monkshart needed a new body-glove
Phrune stalked them in the darkness for their skins.

But Monkshart was a huge man, so how would the skins fit?
Phrune’s Arts must ensure that they were elastic enough to stretch over him,
even from people as little as her.

Another fragment of Maelys’s nightmare: something had
interrupted Phrune and he wasn’t happy about it, for he’d thrown her over his
shoulder and raced down a rough, stony path, cursing all the way. She didn’t
remember anything else. How long had passed? Long enough for the damp chill of
the village to seep into her. She looked around warily in case he was still
lurking nearby, but couldn’t see anyone. No, he wouldn’t risk his skin in a
battle that could only end with the village being wiped out. He’d be making his
escape by now.

Clinging onto a low stone wall, Maelys pulled herself to her
feet. Her head hurt so much that she could hardly think. Something whistled
overhead; this time it sounded like a crossbow bolt. Dropping down, she
squinted though a gap in the stones. She was just inside the wall on the
downhill side of the village. Further down the slope she saw hundreds of
lanterns and the moving shadows of the army. To her left a handful of villagers
were fighting three armoured soldiers, hacking at them with hoes and scythes,
though none of their blows were getting through.

A surgical blow took the arm off a yellow-haired villager, a
measured thrust skewered him through the belly and he collapsed, screaming.
Maelys hastily turned away, ducked down and began to creep up between the
houses, looking for the path to the crater. As she rounded the wall of a
tumble-down cottage she stumbled into five or six villagers. ‘Come on,’ she
hissed. ‘You can’t fight an army.’

‘We have always been prepared to die for the Deliverer, Lady
Maelys,’ said a small, gaunt man with a white wisp of beard on his chin. One
eye glinted as it caught a lantern’s reflection. ‘And if you were a true
believer you would die with us, to give him his chance.’

‘But I don’t want to die,’ she said softly.

‘Then run for your life and you might save it, though you’ll
regret it later.’ He turned away scornfully and the others turned with him,
proudly shouldering their scythes and mattocks. The poor fools. She wanted to
scream the truth at them but knew they wouldn’t believe her. They were too
deeply in Monkshart’s thrall.

She encountered another pair of villagers beyond the next
house, but they spoke just as fervently; after that she didn’t try to persuade
anyone. She had a higher duty – to her family.

Something whirred high in the air. Maelys looked up,
dreading that it was a flappeter, but the drizzle was turning to rain and she
couldn’t see anything for cloud. It hadn’t sounded like a flappeter though. It
had sounded much bigger.

Behind her a flash of light lit up the whole village,
accompanied by a crack-boom that shook the ground. The wall of the cottage
beside her collapsed suddenly and she had to leap sideways to avoid the
tumbling stones. Further down, a woman screamed, high-pitched and tremulous.

Maelys looked back and wished she hadn’t, for soldiers were
swarming through a breach in the wall, their beetle-shell armour shiny in the
light from a burning house. The villagers whacked uselessly at them with their
agricultural tools and were cut down. If she didn’t get moving she would suffer
the same fate.

Maelys took off, which made her head throb even more
cruelly, and had just lurched around the corner of the highest cottage when she
ran into someone in the dark, knocking them off their feet. ‘Sorry!’ she said
instinctively.

‘Lady Maelys?’

‘Jil? What are you doing here?’

‘I live here,’ she said simply.

Maelys made her out now. Jil picked herself up, and then a
child – her little brother.

‘But you’re not planning to die for the Deliverer.’ Maelys
remembered that much. ‘Come on.’ She turned towards the crater path, and Jil
followed.

‘There’s no way out for me, Lady Maelys,’ Jil said so softly
that Maelys barely heard her over the racket of battle, the crackle of burning
cottages and the ominous whirring from above. ‘But …’ Jil pushed the boy at
her. ‘I risked everything for you. Please … take Timfy to safety. He’s a good
boy. He’ll serve you well.’

Maelys took the boy, who clung to her, still half-asleep. He
was thin, like his sister, and small, yet heavy in her arms. ‘Where’s Nish?’

‘Gone, Lady Maelys. With Monkshart and Phrune.’

Her heart lurched. Did she truly mean so little to Nish?
‘Gone where?’

‘Down to the secret way out.’

‘What secret way out?’

‘I don’t know. I heard them talking about it after Nish
carried you to bed.’

‘Hurry!’ Maelys began to walk faster, though Timfy was
growing very heavy and she felt oddly weak, as if the sleep potion had leached
all strength out of her.

‘I dare not, Lady Maelys. Monkshart –’

‘Are you more afraid of Monkshart than you are of dying
here?’

‘Of course, Lady Maelys.’

Perhaps that’s what had happened to the big brother Jil had
so looked up to. Had Phrune taken his skin? Maelys’s arms came out in goose
pimples. What was she supposed to do if they did come upon Monkshart, Phrune
and Nish? She never wanted to see Phrune again. She couldn’t deal with such
sick malevolence, but she had to find a way.

The whirring sounded again and something huge burst out of
the mist above the village with a blast of chilly air. The craft was so
gigantic that Maelys couldn’t take it all in at once; couldn’t believe in it.
She’d never seen such a thing before, because she’d been too dazed to see the
one that had followed them to Tifferfyte.

It had to be an air-dreadnought, the most fearsome craft in
the world. A bronze-sheathed vessel roughly the shape of a longboat, three
spans wide and fifteen long, was suspended from airbags so large that she could
only see their lower curves through the streaming cloud. The airbags were held
in position by a maze of rigging. Ropes dangling from the sides and bow of the
vessel each held five clinging soldiers, ready to leap to ground. They wore the
armour of the God-Emperor’s Imperial Militia.

Jil made an incoherent sound in her throat. Maelys pushed
Timfy into her arms and cried, ‘Come on. Run!’

She bolted up towards the rim of the crater and, after a
brief hesitation, Jil followed. Maelys looked back as they reached the edge.
The Imperial Militia were dropping from the swaying ropes like shining fruit,
some falling into a crouch to level their crossbows, others already running as
they landed.

Jil came level with Maelys, caught her with her free hand
and dragged her over the edge onto the narrow glassy path, the shrieks of the
dying ringing in her ears. Jil’s sandals slipped and she wobbled dangerously,
but found her footing and headed down, still carrying her brother, moving
faster than Maelys would have dared. She wasn’t halfway to the pavilion when
the whirring became an echoing roar and the air-dreadnought appeared above the
crater, so low that its keel scraped the rim.

‘Stop, girl with the black hair!’ The voice sent shudders up
her back – Vomix again. ‘Stop or you’ll be shot.’

Putting her arm across her face to avoid being recognised,
she stumbled down.

A crossbow bolt caromed off the wall above her head, filling
the air with powdered glass. She broke into a trot, her bare feet giving her a
sounder grip this time. Another shot whizzed past to her left. Fortunately,
shooting down at such a steep angle in the gloom would be tricky.

The pavilion lay just ahead. Maelys sprang between the
columns into the welcoming darkness, skidding halfway across before she came to
a halt. Jil was on the other side, holding her brother, who was squirming in
her arms.