Vengeance

betraying my mother and my house. And if Lyf possesses Tobry …?

He shook the unease off and concentrated on now. They were at the maze and he did not know the way through. Nor did he want Tobry to use magery here.

‘Come up here beside me, Rannilt,’ said Rix. ‘Show me the way with your threads.’

She crept forwards, looking up at him. He extended his left hand. Rannilt bit her lip; he did not think she trusted him overmuch. But when she put her small hand in his huge one he felt a surge of protectiveness and understood how Tobry felt about her. Why had they brought her here? They’d known where Tali was headed.

‘This way. Come on.’ She tugged at his hand, her courage showing them both up. No, what she had was far greater than mere courage. Rannilt was terrified, yet she never faltered.

They went down, following the drifting threads only she could see. Why were the shifters free? Were they guarding the place for Lyf? Or had they been sent to the war? Rix prayed they had — there was no hope of surviving a pack attack in here.

Rannilt was breathing hoarsely, the air whistling through her parted lips, and her hand kept clenching against his. What was she sensing? Where was the facinore? The back of his neck prickled. He still felt sure they were being watched; stalked.

They went down the glassy steps that had previously ended in mid-air but now continued into the flaskoid chamber Rix had distantly glimpsed last time. Its top was ringed with kingly and queenly statues, save that their translucent heads turned and their eyes moved as Rix, Tobry and Rannilt approached.

‘Ghosts!’ whispered Rannilt, her nails digging into Rix’s hand.

‘The greatest kings and queens of ancient Cythe,’ Tobry said quietly. ‘But not real ghosts. Lyf must have created them.’

‘As a first line of defence?’ said Rix.

Tobry waved his elbrot. Rannilt let out a little gasp.

‘Don’t use magery here!’ Rix hissed.

‘I don’t think they can harm us,’ said Tobry. ‘Besides, Lyf must know we’re here by now.’

‘Is that supposed to comfort me?’

‘Shh!’ said Rannilt.

As they passed on down, several of the kings raised translucent hands, cursing them in reedy voices and ordering them back. Rannilt let out a moan. Rix’s stomach clenched painfully, as if around a broken brick.

‘Where’s the wrythen?’ said Rix. ‘Where’s Lyf?’

‘If he’s not here,’ said Tobry, ‘it’s more than we could have hoped for. Keep moving.’

‘I don’t like it. Why isn’t he here?’

‘Get going.’

At the bottom, Rix went right and, a third of the way around the curving wall, encountered a bookcase with four shelves formed from the same shiny substance. The top shelf held five books, the second, nine. Even to Rix’s prosaic eyes there was something strange, beautiful and deadly about them, but he had not come here to look at books.

Tobry stopped and studied the titles of the age-worn volumes on the top shelf, whose covers were written in the Hightspall script. ‘The Songs of Survival,’ he said, frowning. ‘Have you heard of them, Rix?’

‘I don’t even read Hightspall’s great books,’ snapped Rix. ‘Come on!’

Tobry turned to the second shelf. ‘The Lore of Prosperity. And the titles are, On Delven, On Metallix, On Smything, On Catalyz … Do they sound like instruction manuals to you?’

As he reached out to touch On Catalyz, Rix’s sword rattled in its scabbard. He dropped a hand to steady it but the sword shot upwards, slamming into his palm, and auras flared around all fourteen books.

Tobry whipped his hand back and the auras faded, but the aura around another book did not — a book made from grey sheet iron, with cast-iron covers, lying open on a pitted stone table. An engraver’s scriber lay beside the book and a corroded platina flask on its side on the table, as though cast there when empty. Most unnerving, the deeply etched letters on the open pages were the colour of burning blood.

‘The Solaces,’ Rannilt whispered.

‘What are the Solaces?’ Rix approached the iron book, warily.

‘Wil said they’re precious books that tell the matriarchs of Cython what to do.’

‘But what are they doing here?’ Rix bent over the open book.

‘Don’t touch anything,’ said Tobry, staring at the book through his elbrot, then shaking his head. ‘Rannilt, can you tell — ’

She was staring the other way, up at the point where the flaskoid passed back through itself. Her teeth chattered.

Rix could see nothing save a slight blur there. ‘What is it?’

‘Tali!’ Rannilt screeched, tearing her hand free and running forwards. ‘Look out! It’s waiting for you.’

CHAPTER 82

Icy waves crept down Tali’s back as the black pearl drifted off the disc and crept towards her outstretched hand. Was Lyf’s pearl responding to her own?

Take it and run! You don’t have to fight Lyf now. Steal the pearl and you damage him, and strengthen yourself to fight him on your own ground. And it’ll help the war too, and please the chancellor.

She was about to close her fingers around it when the gift rose inside her, though it had done that before only to retreat again. How could she bring it to the surface? It was a question Tali had asked a thousand times without ever finding an answer, but she sensed the answer was not far away.

You can only defeat your enemy with magery, but the only person who can teach you how to use your magery is your enemy.

Her head throbbed as though something hard — the master pearl? — was grinding against the inside of her skull, and the bands of colour were dazzling. She was close to a source of phenomenal power, but where was it? Within the pearl, or were pearls merely the key that unlocked a greater power?

And if unlocked, how could she use it? The white torrent that had shorn Banj’s head off had been uncontrollable, and she had been so ill afterwards that without Rannilt she would have been killed. But Banj had been just a man. To fight such a master as Lyf she too must have mastery, yet magery rarely came easily and mastery never quickly.

A first-day apprentice could not hope to defeat her master. Take the damned pearl and go, before he comes back.

The pearl quivered and, without knowing how, Tali understood that she was trespassing in a forbidden place. Not Lyf’s place, but something far older. Something private, sacred, never to be entered by her kind.

The pearl called like a lost, frantic child, and instinctively she tried to calm it, stroke it, but as her fingers grazed the black surface, patterns began to radiate inwards from all around the shaft and she did not need the spectible to see them.

Complicated bands of swirling colour, twisting and writhing, spinning out and frilling and coiling back on themselves, and every little bump and node and coil had its own coiled pattern that mimicked the greater structure, down to the smallest size that she could see. Could the pattern be the key to power? The temptation to look deeper, to win the prize, was irresistible.

She looked down, wondering where the Abysm led to. Tali stroked the pearl and sensed a throbbing power far below, beyond anything any mortal could wield. If she could take a tiny fraction of it, could she command her magery?

Ssst, sssst!

Now grey flecks and threads were revealed, whizzing down the shaft all around her, and she caught