Vengeance

when that thickening spell had blocked him.

Rage washed through the wrythen, that a third-rate magian had robbed him of treasures belonging to him alone. Until the Hightspallers invaded, magery had been a sacred and healing force belonging solely to the king. The enemy had perverted it, as they had corrupted beautiful Cythe, and he felt a special hatred for their magians.

He crushed the emotion — the three stolen nuclixes were still where the thief had hidden them. They would be his in time. He waited, as he had done so many times, for the fifth and last call.

The nuclix that had not yet answered.

The master.

A lesser shade might have twisted its plasm into knots. But if the king had not learned patience while starving to death walled up in a tomb, his wrythen had done so in the centuries of crushing defeat that had followed.

Once the master nuclix answered, the thief magian, Deroe, would try to take it. He must be killed. The wrythen could not take the nuclix himself, nor have the host brought here, because nuclixes were wildly unstable after extraction. It had to be taken by one of the enemy, but he would never use the man or the woman from the cellar, sickening predators that they were.

What about the boy?

He had been traumatised by the killing and, clearly, felt tainted by the blood on his own hands. Now the wrythen realised that the boy had been bathed by the aura of a heatstone since infancy. A heatstone — if only they knew!

For hundreds of years the wrythen had railed against Cython’s vile heatstone trade with the enemy, but at this irony he allowed himself a small smile. Hightspall believed it was robbing a crushed enemy. In reality, it had carried the infected seed into its palace garden. Yes, with the heatstone the boy could be moulded, all unwitting, and once the fifth nuclix answered he would cut it out.

Months passed as the wrythen tweaked the heatstone from afar, setting it up to shape and influence the boy, and it was not easy. Though the wrythen knew where the boy lived, he could not travel there, and could only reach him when he was in dreaming sleep. Nonetheless, over the slow march of the years, the wrythen could command the lad as effectively as if he had possessed him.

Weeks went by.

Months.

Years, and still the wrythen lacked the strength to transmit the next set of pages to the Chamber of the Solaces. Ten years passed before a loud, angry call shivered the silence. The master nuclix was fully formed and it yearned for union with the lesser four.

It was time.

The wrythen knew nothing about the host’s identity. All he could read was a roaring rage, so youthful and furious that it made him smile, for the Pale were cowed creatures whose anger threatened no one but themselves. And because all those with the gift had been culled, they were the only safe hosts.

Taking up a pale-blue ovoid like the egg of a small bird, he touched it to his forehead. Far away and deep underground, his sole servant stirred.

Master?

The host is a slave girl who has just come of age. Bring her to the cellar, unharmed, two nights from now.

How will I find her without a name, Master? There are many, many Pale.

Enquire of the overseers. The woken nuclix will trouble her and she lacks self-control. She will draw attention to herself. But tell no one.

No one, Master?

The host is a threat to Cython. No one must ever know about her.

Not even the matriarchs?

Especially not the matriarchs. You must protect the host from all dangers, and sacrifice yourself before you allow anyone to know what she carries.

Willingly, Master.

The wrythen drew quessence from the small store left to him and traced a link for twenty-six miles: out of the Crowbung Range, north-east around the treble cones of The Vomits, above the scalded lands and boiling mud pools of the Seethings then across the edge of bottomless Lake Fumerous which filled the chasm where the fourth Vomit had once stood two miles high, to the capital city of enemy Hightspall, Caulderon.

To a dirty, crumbling chateau overlooking the lake. To an upper room where the withered magian, Deroe, sat at a table before a selection of arcane instruments. His left hand was raised, ready to snatch the appropriate weapon at the first hint of intrusion.

The wrythen’s consciousness edged along the link. Carefully now. The terrified magian had wards everywhere, in layers overlapping layers, but there was a way through. The wrythen bypassed the wards, wrapped himself octopus-like around Deroe’s mind before he had time to use his carefully prepared defences, and took possession again.

It sickened him to occupy such a foul instrument, but if he was to recover the stolen nuclixes there was no choice. Being physically bound to the caverns, the wrythen could only travel to two places: the mind of the magian he had first possessed a century before, when the blasphemer had broken into the Catacombs of the Kings, greedy for plunder; and the cellar that had once been the wrythen’s own temple, where for aeons the kings had worked their magery to heal the land of Cythe.

You heard the call, the wrythen said into Deroe’s mind. You know the last of the five is ready. The host will be brought to the cellar two nights from now, but this time, I will take delivery.

‘Damn you,’ whined Deroe.

He was fighting the possession, growing stronger all the time, but the wrythen did not fight back. Nor did he look for the nuclixes Deroe had stolen in the hope of driving his possessor out. The master nuclix was Deroe’s bait, the cellar a fatal trap. When Deroe came, he would bring the three with him.

And he would die.

It was time to mobilise the rich boy, now grown to a man. Time to send him the final nightmare, a horror like no other, and embed within it a command that must be obeyed.

Soon the wrythen would be strong enough to begin transmitting the completed sections of the iron book. Once that was done, with freshly distilled alkoyl he would begin on the last, terrible page. Then, when he had all five nuclixes …

Ruin upon his enemies.

Vengeance for his dispossessed people.

Annihilation and rebirth for his beloved country.

CHAPTER 5

He’s coming for me. There’s no way out. He’s going to take me to the cellar and they’re going to hack my head open like Mama’s and there’s no way out. He’s coming for me.

Round and round it cycled, as it had ever since Tali had read her father’s horrifying letter this morning. To survive, she had to escape, though in a thousand years no Pale slave ever had. There was only one way to gain your freedom here — the way Tali’s mother had been given hers.

‘Your eyes are really red,’ said Mia, arms folded over her pregnant belly. ‘Something the matter?’

They were in the sweltering toadstool grottoes where they worked twelve hours a day, every day of the month, every month of the year. At times the drifting spore clouds were thick enough to clog the eyes.

‘Stupid spores,’ Tali lied. ‘They gunk everything up.’

‘You look terrible. Have a break; I’ll do this row for you.’