‘So what happened?’ said the healer, tapping one foot.
The white-faced foreman looked down at the victim. ‘She were up on the third elixerator, toppin’ up the alkoyl level, but someone had taken the dribbler out. The whole flask poured in.’ He groaned. ‘Blew the elixerator to pieces, and a whole flask of precious alkoyl lost — ’
‘And a woman dying in agony,’ the healer said caustically.
‘My little sister, Flix,’ said the foreman, burying his face in his hands and weeping so violently that his whole body heaved.
‘How could this happen? You must have made a mistake.’
The master chymister, shaking his head, drew the healer away from the others. ‘It’s not the first time a flask has been interfered with,’ he said quietly, ‘or a dribbler removed. Someone’s been stealing alkoyl for ages.’
‘But … that’s preposterous,’ said the healer. ‘No Pale is allowed down — ’
‘It’s not a Pale. It’s one of us, and we can never catch him.’
The healer goggled at him, then returned to the woman, who let out a chilling scream and fell silent. The healer, her face blanched, gingerly lifted away the severed, fuming leg and put it down against the wall. Poon squeaked and hid.
‘I’m sorry, Hyme,’ the healer said to the foreman, ‘there’s nothing anyone can do. Alkoyl is dissolving her flesh and bones, and it can’t be neutralised.’ She turned to the thin man dressed in red. ‘Master Chymister, you’d better fetch your stilling apparatus. You’ll want to recover as much as you can.’
‘Won’t be enough,’ he croaked, as if his throat was as scarred as his face. ‘And we can’t do without it. I’ll have to send down the Hellish Conduit for more, if I can get anyone to go.’ He shuddered. ‘After last time — ’
‘If no one else can take that path, you must do your duty,’ the healer said coldly.
‘I always do my duty. And look what it’s done to me.’
Once the chymister had headed back the way he had come, the healer gestured to the stretcher bearers. They picked up their burden and the grim cavalcade passed by Tali, out of sight. As it did, she smelled blood and seared flesh, and under that, very faint, an unnaturally sweet, oily odour with a hint of bitterness. A vaguely familiar odour. Where had she smelled it before?
She went towards the severed leg, which was still smoking against the wall. The green fluid had already eaten pits in the stone, each the depth of a knuckle, and the odour was strong enough to sting her nose from yards away.
Wil’s nose was eaten away on the inside. Could he be the thief? He had been sniffing something from a platina tube, she recalled. Tali backed away. Whatever it was, and whatever urgent chymical purpose the enemy needed it for, she wanted to know no more about it.
The incident had cost her another twenty precious minutes. Tinyhead could not be far behind. Her options were closing off one by one and all she could do was run.
She lifted Poon out, kissed her head and set her down beside the effluxor. ‘Off you go, little Poon. You’ll be a lot safer on your own.’
Poon looked up at Tali reproachfully then, when she gently urged her away, took off towards the darkened hole in the wall. She was outside it when a ginger cat sprang from the rubble and pounced.
Poon squeaked once, then went limp. The cat carried her away, grinning.
As Tali fled, so shocked she was unable to weep, she could not but see the parallel with her own fragile existence.
CHAPTER 16
Tobry walked through solid rock and vanished.
‘Tobe?’ said Rix, unnerved.
‘Maybe the caitsthe’s hurt worse than we thought,’ Tobry said from inside.
‘More likely it’s putting on an act to lure us in.’
It wasn’t the caitsthe he was most afraid of, though. It was the illusion — or the wizardry behind it. Who had made it, and what was it protecting?
Tobry came out again. ‘And maybe it’s circled back to kill the horses and strand us here.’ He chuckled. ‘We’re a dismal pair, aren’t we?’
Rix grimaced. At times his friend’s relentless nihilism grew irksome, yet he could not have done without him. Damn it, he thought, I’m going through. Taking his sword in hand, he walked into the illusion.
It parted around the blade like a twinkling curtain and he found himself in a broad, lens-shaped cave that, oddly, was far colder than it had been outside. Even odder, he could see the vine thicket and the forest beyond — the illusion only worked one way. The floor had been swept so clean by the incessant wind that the single fist- sized stain was a bloody signpost pointing into the dark.
‘It crouched there for a moment.’ Tobry’s eyes were darting again.
To their left, water dripped from dagger-blade stalactites into a natural stone basin shaped like a kidney dish, encrusted with white and yellow concretions and full of clear water. Rix’s throat was dry as paper. He dipped a hand into the basin, the world tilted and turned upside-down, and his sight vanished in a tangle of whirling colours.
‘Rix?
He groaned. Tobry was distorted and wild colours were streaming out of him.
‘What the hell happened?’ said Tobry.
‘Don’t know. Help me up.’
‘Stay down until you’re better.’
‘’S nothing. Just felt dizzy for a bit.’
Tobry gave a barking laugh. ‘You’ve been out for ten minutes.’
‘Can’t have …’ Rix tried to get up but his head was spinning and his hands did not know where the floor was. Again he felt as though part of his life had vanished.
Tobry heaved him to his feet. Rix clung to him, afraid of falling, shivering, shaking.
‘Joints feel funny — not sure knees will hold me up.’ The colours were fading, Tobry and the cave becoming clearer, the vertigo easing. ‘It’s getting better. Think I’m all right now.’
Tobry peered into his eyes. ‘Ever had a turn like that before?’
‘Never. I just put my hand in the basin.’ Rix let go and did not fall down, though he still felt wobbly.
Tobry studied Rix’s hand, which was unmarked, then extended a fingertip towards the water. His hand jerked downwards as if it was being pulled into the basin, and it took all his strength to hold it back. One fingertip touched the water and his head wobbled in a circle. He stumbled to the entrance and scrubbed his finger with a clump of moss.
Rix wiped his own hands and the sensations passed, apart from a trembling weakness of the knees and a worrying liquidity in his bowels. Just what I don’t need right now, he thought wryly.
‘Bad water,’ said Tobry, making a couple of passes over it with his right hand and murmuring words that raised goose pimples on Rix’s arms.
‘Enchanted?’
‘Not by any gramarye I understand. Lucky you didn’t wash your face in it.’
‘Lucky I didn’t drink it,’ said Rix. ‘I was going to.’ Death by magery —
‘I’ll take some back, see if I can find out what it is.’ Tobry emptied out a glass potion phial and filled it with water from the basin, using a couple of twigs as tongs.
Rix could not see the back of the cave, though an air current suggested it ran for some distance. He swallowed painfully. ‘Let’s get on.’
‘You’re not up to it and neither am I.’
‘I told you — ’
‘I’m not going any further. This is a trap.’
