founding.
No one spoke. Rannilt lay quietly again, her golden light gone. Rix was swaying, his eyes staring. Behind his protective wards, Deroe let out a brief, incongruous snigger. He, alone among them, had not been affected by the imploding heatstone.
The stone face cracked and crumbled. Now Lyf’s face could be seen behind it, cold and implacable. Only Deroe’s wards held him out, but for how long?
‘Two days before that scene,’ said Lyf, speaking aloud this time, ‘I saved the yellow-haired man’s life, and that is how he repaid me. It was just the first betrayal by your
‘Why?’ Tali whispered.
‘To prevent my king-magery being passed on. Axil Grandys planned to destroy our kingship and take the magery for himself.’
‘Is that why he tore down the rest of your city, yet preserved this cellar?’
‘It wasn’t a filthy, rat infested hole then,’ Lyf said bitterly. ‘The king’s healing temple was the very crux of Cythe. But until Grandys’s living petrifaction at my wrythen hands — oh, yes, I made him pay! I turned him to opal and hurled him into the Abysm, to spend eternity in helpless agony — he haunted this place, carrying out his profane experiments that have befouled it forever, vainly trying to find the lost secret of king-magery.’
Rix shivered, closed his eyes, then opened them again. So the opalised man was Axil Grandys. Rix’s sword had once been Grandys’s sword and he was Lyf’s enemy. But had the sword led Rix to the caverns to attack Lyf, or to recover Grandys’s opalised body?
‘Now you understand,’ said Lyf, ‘why the land you plundered so ruthlessly rises up to cast you out. You don’t know how to heal it and would not if you could. Your presence is a blight, a corruption of all good things.’ He gestured to Rix. ‘The compulsion still binds you. Cut out the pearl.’
Rix studied Tali for a moment as though he had never seen her before, then turned back to Lyf. ‘I am unbound. You have no hold on me, nor ever will again.’
‘Do it,’ grated Lyf, ‘or I shall visit such torment on you — ’
Rix spread his arms, making an offering of his own body. ‘No pain you inflict on me can atone for my house’s crimes or my own betrayals.’
He turned his back on his enemy as if to say,
The face withdrew, then the cracks in the stone lit yellow as Lyf attacked the wall. Deroe’s agate wards began to rattle and shake, flaring and dying and flaring again. Little chips of stone spalled from them and fell all around. How much longer could they hold Lyf out?
‘Tali, I can never repay you,’ said Rix, misty-eyed. ‘How did you free me?’
‘It wasn’t me. Tobry must have broken your heat — ’ Tali choked on the thought.
‘What’s the matter?’
‘When my sunstone imploded in the shaft, it burned the Cythonians to char. Tobry — ’ She choked. ‘How could he survive such a blast?’
Rix rocked backwards, staring into infinity. ‘Despite what everyone thought, even me, he was always the greater man. If he’s given his life for us, we must honour him by the manner of our own living — and dying.’
Tali took his hand. It was warm and strong. Her own fingers ached from the cold. ‘What now?’
‘I can’t fight magians.’ He drew his sword. ‘Use your gift on Deroe.’
‘It spent itself when the heatstone burst.’
‘Can’t you get it back?’
‘I’ve never been able to command it. Deroe said ebony pearls are too unstable to be controlled by the host. They have to be cut out first.’
‘Then we’ll find another way,’ said Rix.
Staggering footsteps sounded in the passage outside, then Tobry called, ‘Tali, Rix?’ He sounded at the extreme of exhaustion.
‘Tobry?’ Tali cried. He was alive and that was all that mattered.
He lurched to the transparent barrier, supported by Glynnie, and clung to the door frame, his burnt hands smearing red on the stone.
She gasped. His hair had been burnt away and his chest was a mass of weeping blisters.
‘Tobe, what have you done?’ said Rix, running through the barrier to him. ‘Here, let me help you through.’
‘I’m all right,’ said Tobry. ‘The book protected my face and throat, at least. I’ve had worse injuries.’
‘Not much worse,’ said Rix.
He backed through the barrier and took hold of Tobry but it would not allow him to pass into the cellar. Deroe’s spell still held him out. Tali tried to push through; it would not allow her, either. She reached out to Tobry and managed to lay her healing hands on his chest but the burns were beyond her small gift.
‘Who the blazes is Sconts?’ said Rix.
‘Tinyhead,’ said Tali.
And then she heard them: a horde of small, dog-like creatures, their claws scratching the flagstones as they raced down a nearby passage. Jackal shifters. And Tobry was mortally afraid of shifters.
He forced himself upright, thrust Glynnie and her little brother behind him, and took his elbrot in his left hand and sword in his right. Rix looked from Tali to Tobry, not knowing what to do.
‘Lyf is my battle,’ said Tali. ‘Stand by Tobry.’
‘It should have been me,’ said Rix.
CHAPTER 104
‘I’m glad you’re here,’ said Tobry.
‘Me too.’ Since it was the end, Rix would take a savage joy in fighting and dying beside his friend.
‘Where do you think the shifters are?’
‘Not far away.’
Rix went down the passage for fifty paces, holding up Tobry’s lantern. The girl and the boy followed him, holding hands. Rocks rattled in the distance and he heard a frenzy of barking and growling.
‘They’re coming,’ whispered Glynnie.
Benn cried out, stumbled and fell. Glynnie picked him up, pushed him behind her and drew a small knife. A useless weapon against jackal shifters, Rix knew. If they got that close, they would have her, and the boy too.
‘Run back and see if you can get into the cellar,’ said Rix.
‘Lord?’ said Glynnie, terrified but reluctant to leave him.
‘That’s an order.’
Glynnie and Benn ran. Rix backed after them, watching the tunnel. He would see the eyes first, the lantern light reflected there. Water had puddled on the floor here, seeping from crystal-encrusted fissures in the roof. As he splashed through, the first of the jackal shifters came creeping along the wall of the passage, eyeing him sidelong to minimise the reflections. They were more cunning than normal jackals.
‘We can’t get through, Lord,’ called Glynnie. Her voice had a squeak. ‘It’s all right, Benn,’ she whispered, hugging the wild-eyed boy. ‘Lord Rixium and Lord Tobry will look after us.’
She didn’t believe it and neither did Rix. This was a battle no two men could win. Tobry joined him, trembling. His mortal fear was of being bitten by a shifter and suffering the fate of his grandfather — whatever that had been.
