The Fate of the Fallen (The Song of the Tears Book 1) (72 page)

The staff held, just, though it took a long, painful time to
untie her right wrist one-handed. Maelys hadn’t thought about that difficulty
beforehand. She slid along until she could get her feet onto the top step, then
untied her left wrist and manoeuvred the staff in. Holding out the lantern, she
began to make her way down the triangular stair.

It was incredibly steep and coated with slippery yellow
fungi, as well as silver marks like gigantic snail trails. She couldn’t see how
far down the stair went, though it was a lot further than her lantern’s rays
extended.

The howling of the wind dwindled as Maelys descended. She
looked up after a few minutes and couldn’t see the way out, but what she could
see, clinging to the undersides of the stairs, were hundreds, no thousands of
swamp creepers, their glistening antennae stirring in the light like white eggs
on black stalks.

She went down hastily and after a few minutes reached a
landing beside a level floor. Maelys vaguely made out walls in the distance,
though she could not tell if they had been smoothed by human hand, as the floor
must have been, or were the walls of caves.

The nearby wall and ceiling were covered with finger-thick
crusts of dried mucous as well as sticky, ropy webs too thick to have been made
by any spider she’d ever heard of, while every corner, angle and hollow was
clotted with swamp creepers, stirring and crawling over each other until the
squelching sounds were magnified ten thousand times.

The stair continued down, but the air coming up it was cool,
while the floor was blood-warm, so Maelys guessed that the cursed flame lay
somewhere on this level. She stepped onto the floor, shuttered her lantern and
looked for any other source of light.

There, in the far distance, she caught the faintest wavering
blue glow. She opened the shutter a fraction, went three steps and came to a
fresh, muddy footprint on the dusty floor. It wasn’t large enough to be Colm’s,
so it had to belong to the second rider and she must assume that he was nearby.
He was probably going to the flame as well.

Resisting her urge to panic, Maelys shuttered the lantern
and moved twenty steps to her left in case her light had been seen. She
couldn’t hear anything above the squelching of the swamp creepers gliding on
their mucous tracks. She could smell them, too, a sickly spiciness that
contrasted unpleasantly with the bouquet of the amber-wood.

Maelys went carefully towards the glow, which became a blue
flame issuing knee-high from a star-shaped fissure in the middle of a large
block of stone itself rising chest-high from the floor.

The outsides of the block had been roughly shaped, though
the makers did not appear to have had any particular form in mind. It was
wedge-shaped, about three spans long and one-and-a-half spans wide at the broad
end, tapering to just half a span at its narrowest. It was shaped something
like a coffin, though one that would have fitted a giant.

The top of the block was coated with soot, plus sugar sized
crystals of sulphur and salts condensed from the flame. Shiny bituminous trails
had once oozed outwards from the fissure, though these had set hard and
cracked. The sides of the block held more unreadable glyphs, and yet more were
carved into the walls and roof, though the latter were blurred to
unintelligibility by layers of swamp creeper crusts.

That was all she saw in the dim light, and there was no time
to speculate about the inscriptions. She got out Flydd’s crystal and was moving
towards the cursed flame, wondering what the curse was and how she was supposed
to recharge the crystal at a flame anyway, when she smelt an unpleasantly
familiar oily odour.

Instantly, a set of plump fingers fixed around the back of
her neck and her worst nightmare rewoke. She dropped her staff, though she kept
hold of the crystal.

‘Perfect timing, little Maelys.’ Phrune pressed his slick
lips to her ear. ‘My master is dying at Nish’s hand and only one thing can save
him – a blood sacrifice at the cursed flame. There’s no better blood than
virgin’s blood. I’ll fill a small bucket from you, and then I’ll have the skin
I should have taken from you in Tifferfyte, you vicious little bitch.’

FIFTY

‘Can’t go – after Maelys,’ said Flydd.
‘God-Emperor – coming.’

‘I went without her once,’ said Nish. ‘I’m not doing it
again. Zham?’

He was at the door. ‘Surr?’

‘Help me get him dressed. I’ve got to go after Maelys and we
can’t leave Flydd now. You’ll have to take him to the escape way and wait for
me.’

Zham gathered up Flydd’s clothes. Fortunately the garments
had been loose. He drew Flydd’s pants up his muscular legs and tied them at the
waist. The shirt barely met around his chest. Flydd’s old boots were far too
small, but Nish found a pair of leather sandals that he was able to cram onto
the large feet and buckle up, then they helped him to stand.

‘Find a pack, Zham. Fill it with food and drink, as much as
you can cram in.’

Flydd was swaying where he stood. Nish held him up.
‘Xervish, where’s the escape way?’

‘Rope,’ slurred Flydd. ‘Hidden rope ladder – behind
hut – over cliff. Must rest.’

It was taking too long. ‘Get him down, Zham,’ cried Nish,
frantically checking his sword and bow. It could be too late already. ‘I’ve got
to fly.’

Another gigantic thump, somewhere in the distance, shook the
ground and the hut.

‘Surr!’ cried Zham from the door. ‘Quick!’

Nish couldn’t let go of Flydd, so he lurched him to the
door, looked up and gaped.

A gigantic grappling iron or five-fluked anchor, the size of
a horse and cart, had been fired from the clouds. It had hooked over the rim of
the plateau not far from the hut, and now the loops of cable trailing in the
air after it, wavering in the wild updraughts, were being pulled tight.

Another grappling iron, fired off to their left, shook the
ground as it buried itself in the rocks beyond the north-western cleft.
Waist-thick cables trailed in the air towards the far side of the plateau from
a third anchor.

The cables were slowly pulled up into the base of the cloud
until they went iron-taut, though Nish could not see what they were attached
to. Colm came limping around the cliff edge, covered in mud and old blood, his
notched sword in hand. By the look of him, he’d faced a tougher opponent at his
cleft.

‘Is this it?’ he said in a flat voice.

‘Yes.’

Nish let the bow fall to the ground, realising that he must
fail Maelys again. There was no point going after her now, for the raw power of
Gatherer, this close, would penetrate all illusions and he would be seen before
he got ten paces. Maelys would have to take her chances, which Nish felt were a
lot better than his.

Colm raised the sword. ‘Then I’m ready for it. I’m sick of
waiting. Where’s Maelys?’

Nish explained, wearily.

‘And you let her go?’ Colm cried frantically, shaking Nish.
‘What kind of a man are you, Deliverer?’

Zham peeled them apart with his free hand. ‘We weren’t here,
Colm. We were over there by the rim, fighting flappeters and other beasts, and didn’t
see her go.’ He stared up at the base of the cloud, which was black and
roiling, and swallowed. ‘The God-Emperor is coming. There’s nothing we can do
for her.’

‘And without that crystal we’ve got no hope of getting
away,’ Nish added.

Colm crouched down and put his head in his hands. ‘Ah
Maelys, Maelys.’ He stood up. ‘Is this the end? Must we go over the cliff,
then?’

‘Not yet,’ rumbled Zham. ‘Have faith. She could be on her
way back with the charged crystal already.’

‘I can’t see her,’ said Colm, springing up and staring into
the mires. ‘But you’re right. We must have faith, for her sake.’

The base of the cloud stirred, then something oval, flat and
glassy sent it whirling out of the way. It looked like the base of a platter,
hundreds of spans long and many spans thick. The ropes slackened momentarily
but tightened again; the base jerked down another half span; then another.

Slender white columns ran up from its ends, sides and middle
into the clouds, as if it were suspended from something. Now on the glass base
there appeared the most astonishing building Nish had ever seen. Indeed, he
wasn’t sure that it was a building.

A series of arching shells, dazzlingly white, rose from
blood-red foundations built upon the glass, but the shells were not held up by
beams, columns or any other structure – they simply soared a good fifty
spans into the sky, supported by each other.

And now, as the structure, or craft, jerked lower, he saw
that the white columns were topped by tiers of long arching wings like horizontal
sails fixed to each other by struts and taut wires. The lowest tier consisted
of four such wings. Above the gaps between them stood a tier of three; above
that, two; and, highest of all, one, so the wings formed an open roof.

‘It’s a sky palace,’ said Zham in wonder.

As good a name as any, Nish thought. The white palace slowly
descended, shuddering in the wind but held against it by the tension of the
cables. The gale whistled shrilly through them.

‘How can such a weighty craft move through the air?’ said
Colm.

‘It defies the very principles of flight,’ said Nish, who
had studied such matters in the days when air-floaters had first been invented,
‘and all natural laws – intentionally so, I’d say. It’s a demonstration.
It’s meant to show the world that, with the power of Gatherer and Reaper,
Father can transcend all natural laws. That he truly is a god.’ He felt a touch
of awe that his own father, who had not been a great mancer, could have
achieved such mastery of the Art.

‘Then we’d better hope Flydd’s escape plan works.’ Colm
turned to frown at him. ‘I assume
this
is Flydd.’

‘I – am – Xervish – Flydd,’ said the
renewed Flydd, as if trying to convince himself.

Without warning, blasts of white fire speared down towards
each of the four clefts in the plateau. Shouts echoed up from the main cleft,
nearest the hut.

Nish and Colm exchanged glances. ‘He’s cleared the
barriers,’ said Nish. ‘His army will be here in minutes. We’d better get
going.’

The sky palace was now held rock-steady in the howling gale,
hanging just a few spans above the mires. A white railing swung aside and a set
of silver stairs extended out and down to one of the paths.

A pair of white-armour-clad soldiers appeared, the
God-Emperor’s Imperial Guard in their field uniforms. They marched down the
steps to inspect the land below. The guard on the right gestured with a gloved
hand towards the hut. The great windlasses spun, the cables creaked, and the
sky palace began to creep in their direction.

The first soldiers appeared from the main cleft, followed by
a handful from the south-western one which Nish had fired. Soon squads of
troops were advancing across the plateau and around the rim paths, their armour
sparking. Even if Maelys had charged the crystal, she’d never get through to them
now.

‘Come on!’ Nish said hoarsely, dragging Flydd behind the
hut. They were finished but he was going to fight to the very end. The others
followed close behind. ‘He said there’s a hidden rope ladder.’

Everyone began to feel among the rocks, save Flydd. ‘Need
– time.’

‘There
is
no more
time, Xervish,’ cried Nish. ‘That’s the God-Emperor out there and if you don’t
do something we’re all doomed.’

‘Doom – time,’ mumbled Flydd.

Colm began searching the mossy edge of the cliff. Zham was
walking backwards parallel to the cliff, dragging his sword hilt across the
ground. ‘It’s here!’

He groped between the rocks and pulled up a moss-covered
rope ladder, one end of which was fixed to a ring buried in the rock. ‘Looks
half rotten,’ he said to himself, then shrugged, went to the cliff and tossed
the free end over. He peered down. ‘There’s a hollow in the cliff below here.
Could be a cave or tunnel.’

‘If it isn’t,’ said Colm dryly, ‘we’d better keep going down
when the ladder ends.’

A searing blast smashed the amber-wood hut into a wave of
whirling, smouldering splinters that battered against them before being swept
over the cliff. The blast would have carried Zham with it had he not been
hanging onto the ladder. He slipped, went half over, then moved down out of
sight.

The sky palace stopped about fifty spans from where the hut
door had been. The white staircase extended again and Nish’s heart clenched
painfully, for at the top of it, dressed all in black and flanked by his tall
guards, stood his father.

‘There’s no way to escape, Cryl-Nish,’ Jal-Nish called,
smiling thinly beneath the half-mask. He strode towards Nish. ‘There never was;
never will be. This has all been a game. You can either play it against me and
lose every time, or play with me and win. Which is it to be?’

Nish assessed the chance of escape. None. Colm was heading
for the ladder and might get down, but Jal-Nish would take Nish and Flydd
before they could reach the ladder. And without a competent, empowered Flydd
they had no hope anyway.

‘Xervish?’ said Nish, desperately.

‘Need – time,’ said Flydd dully.

‘You’ll have all the time you could wish for, Xervish,’ said
Jal-Nish, stopping where the hut had been and examining Flydd dispassionately.
‘I can’t believe you, of all people, were taken in by that renewal spell. It
has a false step in it. Surely you knew that?’

‘Step …?’ said Flydd.

‘It was put there in ancient times to ensure that only the
truly deserving could successfully take the path of renewal. Any great mancer
would have recognised the falsehood, but you always were flawed, Flydd.’

‘Time,’ said Flydd, more strongly.