odds and won.’
‘No!’ cried Tali. ‘No, no, no!’
One of the heaps moved. The jackal corpses were pushed aside and a creature the like of which she had never seen before lurched to its feet. It was almost as tall as Rix, though more like a cat standing on its hind legs than a man. Its short fur dripped with gore, splattered brains oozed down its front and several canine teeth were stuck there.
The creature was bleeding from a dozen wounds, and she was backing away when she saw something familiar in its grey eyes. A gentleness that did not fit the beast before her.
‘Tobry?’ she whispered.
With wild shrieks and savage cries, the cat-creature began to shrink and change from cat to man. The fur withdrew into the skin, the muck fell away and Tobry stood there, naked but for the belt of his kilt.
His burns were gone, healed in the transformation. So were the many scars and bruises he’d had before, apart from the injuries he’d taken as a caitsthe. Tobry was wounded in all the same places as the cat had been, though the bleeding had stopped and the smaller gashes were starting to scab over. It wasn’t quite the old Tobry, though. His ears were slightly pointed, his cheeks were furred and the silvery grey of his eyes now had a hint of green and gold.
‘Tobry!’ She threw herself at him and wrapped her arms around him, joy and horror intermingled. Lyf gone, Tobry alive — it was too much to take in.
He fell, carrying her down with him. He was too weak to stand up. She lifted his head. ‘What’s happened to you?’
‘The damn fool ate part of a caitsthe’s liver,’ Rix said harshly, helping Tobry into the cellar and closing the stone door, ‘and now he’s become a shifter-cat, as if he’d been bitten by the beast. And therefore, he’s condemned.’
Tali swallowed. ‘Tobry? Tell me it’s not true.’
He looked into her eyes and, momentarily, he was the same wonderful man who had taken her to the ball and whirled her about like all the other couples, though she had not danced a step in her life.
‘It’s true,’ he said in a voice from which all laughter was gone, all hope.
‘Why? Why?’
‘Had I not, Rix and the children and I would be dead, and the jackal men would be holding you down for Lyf to gouge out the pearl.’
She crushed him to her, ignoring the gore smeared across his chest. ‘You’re such a fool. Such a brave, stupid fool.’
‘Don’t say it.’ He tried to push her away but she clung tighter. ‘Let me go. I’m a monster and I have to be put down.’
Tali jerked free. ‘Rix, tell him that’s nonsense.’
‘It’s the law,’ said Tobry, ‘and rightly so, as I know better than anyone.’ He looked around. ‘What happened here?’
‘Deroe’s dead,’ said Tali, ‘and Lyf’s gone. We hurt him badly.’
‘Not badly enough!’ said Rix.
‘What do you mean?’
‘The three pearls are gone. Lyf must have taken them with him.’
CHAPTER 107
‘We’ve got to have a fire, Rix, or Rannilt will die.’
A freezing wind spat ice crystals in Tali’s face. They had gathered at the top of Rix’s cracked tower to see the end. Since Lyf had four pearls now and she could not use the master pearl within her, the end would not be long in coming.
Rannilt lay still, cocooned in blankets. Tali had on all the clothes she possessed, and one of Rix’s cloaks, yet she was shuddering convulsively. It was six-thirty in the morning and just starting to get light. In the distance, all three Vomits were erupting again, an unequivocal portent of the fall of a nation.
‘Caulderon is finished,’ Rix said harshly.
He looked down at the child and his face softened. He limped down the stairs, shortly to reappear lugging his easels.
Rix smashed them to kindling and lit a fire in a corner of the wall. Tali winced with every symbolic splinter he fed to the flames.
‘Burning your bridges?’ said Tobry, who was slumped on a bench in an exhaustion so total that she wondered if he would ever move again.
Tali laid Rannilt on a bench beside the fire. The child was no better after all, but no worse, either. The wind howled in between the columns, whirling smoke in their faces. This defeat is due to my failures, she thought. I didn’t protect Rannilt and I couldn’t help Rix when he most needed it. Then I lied to Tobry and he lost hope. But my biggest failure was with Lyf. I should not have hesitated.
In the background, another failure nagged at her. Something that might have made the difference if only she could have thought of it, but she could not dredge the memory up.
Glynnie and Benn carried up a forequarter of deer from the palace stores. Glynnie cut it up and they threaded chunks of red meat on skewers and set them over the fire. Juices dripped and sizzled on the coals. Tali stared at the feast, her mouth flooding. The only meat slaves were given in Cython was poulter, and that was only once a year.
‘What’s going to happen now?’ she said.
Rix stared over the wall, his jaw clenched. ‘I should have jumped the other night.’
‘What’s that?’ quavered Benn, who was standing on a bench looking towards the gates of Caulderon.
A lean, footless outline had appeared above the gates, a mid-air manifestation hundreds of feet high.
Tali started. ‘I forgot the iron book. We can’t let him get it back.’
‘Forget it,’ said Rix. ‘It’s over.’
Lyf’s shattered shinbones were still smoking.
The top of Tali’s head, where she had touched the needle point to it, throbbed. She rubbed it and her finger came back bloody. Memories stirred, of blood and alkoyl, and those fleeting words on the iron book.
‘I know how to stop him. Rix, come on!’
She ran for the roof door, yelling over her shoulder. ‘Look after Rannilt. We won’t be long.’
‘What are we doing?’ said Rix as he caught her on the stairs.
She hurtled down. ‘I saw it, but I didn’t take it in.’
‘Saw
‘The iron book was written with alkoyl that he distilled drop by drop from the Abysm. Remember that tube of alkoyl Wil dropped in the cellar? We can write our own ending.’
‘How? We can’t read the damned book.’
The flood of hope was choking her; Tali could barely speak. ‘Blood,’ she gasped.
‘You’re making even less sense than usual.’
She stopped on the fourth landing to catch her breath. ‘Last night a drop of my blood fell on the book and
