Vengeance

Momentarily the figure was outlined in tinges of red — swirling robes, staff like a shepherd’s crook, a vaguely human shape that was glacier blue at the centre. It was like a wrythen from the nightmares Rix had been having lately, then the torch went out as if it had been swallowed whole.

‘The land is haunted,’ Rix gasped. ‘How are we going to survive?’

‘How are we going to survive?’ Tobry retorted.

He waved the elbrot furiously and it lit, telling him which path to take through the maze. Rix was glad of the enchantment now, for he could never have found the way. But then, he would not have seen the concealed cave in the first place.

‘It’s gaining,’ said Rix. ‘Can you hold it off?’

Tobry laughed hollowly. ‘Not even if I were Hightspall’s chief magian.’

They were approaching the rubble pile below the cave entrance, Rix limping badly, when a blast woven from a thousand shrieking souls howled up at the fissured roof ahead of them. It touched it with a pearly flicker, drifted forwards, and stone spalled away everywhere it touched. Crevices opened, fractures ground over rock fractures.

‘It’s trying to bring the roof down,’ gasped Tobry.

Rock began to fall, making a deadly curtain across the passage.

‘Don’t stop!’ Tobry dragged Rix on. ‘Dive through!’

‘We’ll never make it.’

‘Better we don’t than be trapped here with that.’

The wrythen hated them — Rix could see the rage shimmering all around the creature. It had never met them before, yet it loathed and despised them, wanted nothing but to crush them into oblivion. Why?

He ignored the pain and ran harder, preparing to leap the rubble pile and dive through the falling rocks. They might just make it.

Then something rose up from the other side of the rubble, its eyes reflecting the pearly light coming off the roof. Eyes that were higher than the top of Rix’s head.

The caitsthe was blocking the way out.

CHAPTER 18

What was alkoyl, and why had the master chymister shuddered at the thought of going down the Hellish Conduit, whatever that was, to get more? What were the enemy readying in such haste? And why?

Without warning, fingers thin and cold as knotted wire closed around Tali’s upper arms and she was jerked backwards into darkness. Tinyhead? No, her attacker was far too small. Biting her tongue to stifle a cry that was bound to bring guards running, Tali tried to pull free.

The fingers locked like manacles. ‘Stupid little scrag. Hold still.’ The woman’s voice was a croaky rasp, like the call of some aged bird.

‘Who are you?’ Tali whispered, struggling fruitlessly. There was something unnatural about the wiry fingers, which were draining the strength from her. ‘Are — are you taking me to Tinyhead?’

A bony fist cracked Tali on her sore ear. A series of lurching heaves took her backwards into a tunnel as black as her own terror. She was jerked around, thrust through a doorway and a latch clacked. The room was airless, confining and dank. She felt sure she was going to die here.

She swayed, so disoriented that she could hardly tell which way was up. ‘What are you going to do to me?’

‘Shut up.’

Tali gained the impression that her captor had an ear to the door. After a minute or two a brown, streaky glimmer appeared from that direction, and grew.

It revealed a tiny, birdlike Pale, a woman so ancient she was bald save for a few strands of white silk dangling from either side of a mottled skull with a jagged scar across the top. Her face was sharp as an axe, the eyes round like a bird’s eyes, the nose a parrot’s beak. Her shrunken lips appeared to have been sucked inside a toothless mouth and her fingers might have been lengths of wire knotted at the knuckles. As well as a grey loincloth, she wore a blouse made from frayed ragweed.

But Pale did not mean friend. The other slaves would either ignore her or betray her for the enemy’s favour. Tali assumed that this woman intended the latter.

The light, which sprang from her fingertip, was pure white where it shone on the wall, though transmitted through her broken nail it became a dingy brown.

The illuminated patch of wall was deeply sculpted to resemble a dripping forest in which every rock and fallen tree trunk was carpeted in bright green moss. Only the gritty stone beneath Tali’s feet told her that she was in a subterranean slave camp, not a primeval woodland.

‘Who — ?’ said Tali.

‘Shut it, you little turd!’

The eviscerated mouth had not moved. It sounded as though the words issued through the old woman’s gaping nostrils. Her head was tilted sideways like a crow studying an undersized worm and wondering if it was worth the effort.

Tali dragged her eyes back to the light, which was too bright to come from a chip of glowstone. Its source could only be magery, and no slave revealed that gift to a stranger — unless the old woman planned to kill Tali after getting what she wanted.

Tali tensed. Could she knock her aside and get away? But if she did, the old woman might sound the clangours.

‘Don’t try it,’ the old woman said.

‘Wasn’t going to,’ Tali lied.

‘My name is Mimoy,’ said the old woman, ‘and I’m dying.’

She didn’t look it. Though she was as aged and leathery as a mummy, her eyes were bright and her grip had been unbreakable. Perhaps that had been magery, too.

‘You are Thalalie vi Torgrist, of the noble House vi Torgrist,’ said Mimoy.

‘Yes,’ Tali said faintly.

‘You’re planning to break out of Cython,’ said Mimoy. ‘I require a service of you.’

Tali’s diaphragm spasmed, forcing the air from her lungs, and for several seconds she could not draw breath. How could Mimoy know her plans when she’d told nobody?

She focused on the second sentence. ‘A service’ could only mean blackmail — do what I say or I’ll betray you. Or was Mimoy a kwissler, here to lull Tali into admitting her plans? Planning to escape got you the Living Blade — after various tortures.

‘Don’t know what you’re talking about,’ she said hoarsely. A bead of sweat ran down her forehead into her left eye. She blinked it away.

The knotted-wire knuckles struck Tali’s ear where Orlyk had gashed her with the chuck-lash. Pain lanced through the lobe.

Mimoy dragged her forwards, pressing the forefinger nail of her unlit hand into Tali’s breastbone. ‘I’ve been watching over you all my life. I know everything about you.’

‘I’ve never seen you before,’ Tali said weakly.

Mimoy’s smile was as ragged as her nail. ‘Your mother tried to teach you your gift. She failed.’

The sweat bursting from Tali’s brow turned icy. Mimoy knew too much, and they were both going to die for it. ‘Wizardry is evil,’ Tali said, parrot fashion. ‘It’s forbidden to all save the lost kings of Cython.’

‘Iusia vi Torgrist failed,’ said Mimoy, prodding Tali to emphasise each word, ‘because your gift is not the feeble heritage magery of House vi Torgrist.’

‘Don’t say that word,’ Tali cried. How could the old woman talk so casually about the forbidden? ‘I have no gift.’

Mimoy indented a series of crescents down Tali’s breastbone. ‘When you were three, a slave boy was