The Fate of the Fallen (The Song of the Tears Book 1) (2 page)

Two-thirds of the way across, at a circular table carved
from green stone, sat his father. Nish caught his breath. Jal-Nish was writing
and did not look up. Nish hesitated, his throat dry, then forced himself to go
on.

Jal-Nish had once been a stocky, almost plump man, bursting
with life and vigour and a charm Nish had envied, but all that had been
sacrificed to a seething bitterness at his mutilation, a burning thirst for
vengeance and a ruthless determination to prove himself by clawing his way to
the top, no matter what it took.

Nish often asked himself how his father’s corruption had
come about. How had the troubled child, then the stern and unyielding father,
become the irredeemable monster that Jal-Nish now was? What had been the
fateful choice from which there had been no going back? How and why had
Jal-Nish crossed that gulf? And how close was he, Nish, to the same abyss?

Jal-Nish looked up. His figure was now hard and spare. His
curly hair was as thick as it had ever been, though the rich brown had faded to
a peppery grey. He still wore the platinum mask he’d made long ago to cover the
ruin a lyrinx’s claws had made of half his face, but he had two arms now. The
amputated right arm had been replaced – flesh-formed with the power of
the tears, Nish assumed. That bitter day on the ice plateau was burned into his
memory. Jal-Nish had begged to be allowed to die, but Nish could not bear to
lose him. He’d pleaded with Irisis to do whatever was necessary to save his
father. She’d cut off his arm at the shoulder and sewed his face back together,
and from that moment Jal-Nish had been determined to destroy her.

If he could replace an arm, why hadn’t he been able to
repair his face? Nish stopped a few spans away from the table and attempted a
tentative probe with his feeble clear-sight, but discovered nothing.

His father laid down his pen, raised his new right hand, a
trifle mechanically, and, to Nish’s left, the air formed a curving mirror a
couple of spans high and wide. ‘Look at yourself, my son.’

Nish resisted as long as he could, but he hadn’t seen his
own reflection in ten years, so he looked. He was filthy, for there was no
water for washing in Mazurhize. The caked grime could have been scraped off him
with a knife, while his matted hair hung down past his backside. There were
streaks of grey in it, but even worse, it appeared to be receding at the front,
though he wasn’t yet thirty-three. He was as thin as string, his back was bent
and there was a defeated look in his brown eyes. The mirror also showed a
miasma surrounding him like a foetid cloud, his reek made visible.

He looked away, overwhelmed. Jal-Nish didn’t have to say
anything. How could such a shambling wreck as he think to defy the God-Emperor?

‘Ten years you’ve served,’ said his father, ‘and it has
gained you nothing. You know I’ll never bend, Cryl-Nish, so what say you now?
Will you stand at my right hand and help me rule unruly Santhenar, or do you
still defy me?’

Every day of his imprisonment Nish had imagined this moment
and tried to prepare himself for it, but now realised he could never be ready.
A thousand times he’d weighed up his three choices: to defy his father, go back
to Mazurhize and eventually die there in squalid futility; to swear fealty and
serve him, surely to become as degraded and brutal as Jal-Nish. Or to follow
the flimsy plan and try to seize the tears for himself, though that hope was
fading rapidly. Even if he did gain them, the tears would probably withhold
their Arts from him. There had been plenty of time for Jal-Nish to bind them to
him alone.

There was a fourth alternative: to swear fealty, but break
his oath and work in secret to bring his father down, though how could he hope
to deceive the master of deceit himself? And if Nish used his father’s methods
against him, could he claim to be any better?

He didn’t want to think about the final option – to
take the coward’s way out and end it all. After Jal-Nish had executed beautiful
Irisis, the love of Nish’s life, he’d sworn a binding oath and he couldn’t go
back on it.

There has to be a
purpose behind her sacrifice, he had raged to the shocked crowd in the town
square, and I will make it my own. I will survive whatever this monster does to
me. I will endure, and you must endure with me, for the coming years are going
to be the cruellest in all memory.

Let the name Irisis
become a rallying cry for the resistance. Let the resistance grow until not
even the tears can stand against it. And on that day we will tear down this
evil tyrant –

‘There is no resistance,’ said Jal-Nish as if he’d read
Nish’s mind. And for all Nish knew, perhaps with the power of the tears he
could
read minds. ‘I control the known
world. My wisp-watchers stand in every village marketplace, my loop-listeners
on every street corner, and my snoop-sniffers creep into the darkest corners of
the underworld. I have secret watchers too, and they speak to the tears daily.
Nothing escapes me, Cryl-Nish.’

Nish knew that much already. His father’s guards often
boasted of the grip their dread master held on the world, though they looked
over their shoulders when they said it.

‘Irisis had a destiny beyond the grave,’ said Nish. ‘She
died to bring you down.’

Jal-Nish roared with laughter. ‘Yet ten years have passed and
I'm stronger than ever. Abandon that hope, Cryl-Nish. The dead have no destiny
– but I do, and you're bound up with it.

‘You’re all alone.’ Jal-Nish smiled behind the mask –
Nish could tell from the way the muscles moved in his father’s exposed cheek
– before he went on, brutally, ‘Every one of your old allies is dead.’

Nish reeled. His one sustaining hope was the belief that
some of his friends still worked in secret to bring Jal-Nish down. But if they
were gone –

‘Moreover, there’s not a trace of the Secret Art left on
Santhenar, apart from my own. I’ve sought out all the old Arts, incorporated
the best of them into the tears and destroyed the rest.’ Jal-Nish paused, then
added, ‘And I’ve made sure no one can use them but me.’

Nish tried to conceal his growing panic. It was hopeless. He
was defeated before he began, so what was the point of trying? Indeed, what was
the point of anything?

Jal-Nish glanced to his left, towards a pedestal rough-sawn
from black meteoritic iron. Above it, floating in the air like melon-sized
balls of swirling, shimmering quicksilver, and emitting a low humming sound,
were the tears that had been formed by the explosion of the node of power at
Snizort twelve years ago. They were darker, more swirling, complex and ominous
now, and Nish felt his gut tighten at the sight of them.

The humming rose slightly in pitch. ‘The Profane Tears. I
call the left-hand tear Gatherer,’ Jal-Nish went on, ‘for it’s set to gather
every detail that my watchers, listeners and sniffers uncover; both the public
ones and those that are hidden, secret,
invisible
.
The right-hand tear is Reaper, which enforces my will in all things. Gatherer
and Reaper are the perfect servants: ever watchful, utterly trustworthy, and
they ask nothing of me. Can you hear the song of the tears, Cryl-Nish? One day
Gatherer and Reaper could be calling to you.’

Nish shivered. The teardrop-shaped globes were made of nihilium,
the purest substance in the world, and one that held the print of the Art more
tightly than any other. The Profane Tears had brought only ruin since the
army-annihilating moment of their formation. Just days afterwards Jal-Nish had
stolen them, slain everyone who knew of their existence and, at the end of the
war, when every node on Santhenar had been destroyed, all the Secret Art became
his. With the tears he held absolute power, and if no one else could use them
he could never be beaten.

‘They’ve changed,’ said Nish, unable to tear his eyes away.

‘As I absorb the old Arts into the tears, they grow. And I’m
close to achieving my ultimate goals, Cryl-Nish. So very close.’

‘What goals?’ Nish croaked.

Jal-Nish just smiled. He could be lying, though his words
had the ring of truth, and black, uncontrollable despair washed over Nish. He
was all alone and there was no way out.

Jal-Nish’s one-eyed gaze softened, an odd thing in itself,
then he said gently, ‘My son, my only son, you’re all I have left. Why have you
forsaken me?’

Nish stared at him. His sister, who was two years older, had
died in childbirth many years ago, but as far as he knew, his brothers were
still alive. ‘What’s happened to my brothers?’

His father’s jaw knotted. ‘Dar-Nish died of the flesh-wasting
disease in the last days of the lyrinx war. Mun-Mun was slain by rebels seven
years ago, and Vigg-Nish had an apoplexy last summer and never recovered. None
of them gave me grandchildren, and I can no longer father children.’ Jal-Nish
stared blankly at him, and Nish was astonished to see a tear in his eye, though
it was swiftly drawn back in. ‘I have only you now.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ Nish said dully. He hadn’t been
close to his brothers, who took after their father in all important ways, but
nonetheless he felt the wrench, the emptiness.

‘I couldn’t bear to speak of it.’

‘And Mother?’ She had repudiated Jal-Nish after his maiming
but Nish had always hoped she’d go back.

‘Never mention her name!’ Jal-Nish hissed. ‘She’s dead to
us. She doesn’t exist!’

‘Dead?’ said Nish. ‘You haven’t …?’ The thought was so awful
that he couldn’t follow it through.

‘She lives,’ grated his father. ‘She doesn’t deserve to,
after the callous way she abandoned me when I needed her most, but I’ll allow
no one to raise a finger against her.’ With an irritable gesture, he dismissed
the topic.

‘What is your choice, Cryl-Nish? Will you bow before me, be
my first lieutenant and do my will in all things, without question?’ His eye
grew liquid with yearning. He’d treated his sons harshly but family was the one
thing he’d cared about, and now only Nish remained. ‘Do so and I will give you
wealth undreamed of, the most beautiful women in the world, and power second
only to my own. Everything you wish for can be yours, and all you need do is
say one word.’ Jal-Nish swallowed, then said softly, ‘I need you, Son. I’m so
alone and I can’t fight on by myself forever.’

The pleading tone, and the admission of weakness, shocked
Nish. ‘What do you mean, “fight on”?’ he said sceptically.

‘Don’t judge me. You have no idea of the vicious creatures
that lurk in the eternal void between the worlds, desperate to get out, but I
do. I’ve seen them with the tears, and every one of them hungers for the prize:
the jewel of worlds that is Santhenar. They can only be kept at bay by a strong
leader with the whole world united behind him. The least hint of rebellion and
they’ll swarm over us.’

Nish did know of those perils, better than most, and it gave
him pause. Santhenar had been troubled by the void before. Several of the
mighty Charon had come here in ancient times, and Santhenar had been invaded
some two hundred and twenty years ago, when the Way between the Worlds had been
opened. Thranx and lorrsk had briefly terrorised the world before being
exterminated, but the huge winged lyrinx had thrived in remote corners of the
globe and, once their numbers had increased, begun the war for Santhenar which
had lasted for a hundred and fifty years.

They were gone now, to bring order to the beautiful world of
Tallallame, and Nish found it hard to believe that Santhenar was again under
threat. It wasn’t easy to escape the void, and his father’s claim had the ring
of self-justification. The assertion was easily made and impossible to
disprove. Yet Nish clung to the hope that he’d been right and his father wasn’t
irredeemable. That there might still be some good left in him, and that he,
Nish, could save his father from himself.

‘How do you know, Father?’ Jal-Nish was happy for the world
to see him as a black-hearted monster, but he needed his one surviving son to
know that he’d acted in a noble cause.

‘I’m not mad or deluded, whatever you think. The tears told
me.’

‘Told you?’

‘Gatherer can see far beyond the boundaries of the world;
and out in the void a terrible threat is growing.’

Nish’s scepticism must have shown on his face, for
Jal-Nish’s eye grew hard. ‘If I must fight alone, I will. Deny me and you’ll
rot in your stinking cell for another ten wasted years, but nothing will
change. No one else can use the tears – save you, Cryl-Nish, if you prove
yourself. With their power I don’t weaken and I’ll never grow old.’ Nish saw a
faint hesitation there, a shadow in his father’s eye as if the inevitable
decline into old age bothered him. ‘Rather, my wits and strength increase every
day – unlike yours.’

Nish glanced in the mirror and involuntarily clenched his
fists. He couldn’t endure ten more years of such degradation, but he was coming
to think that his plan had been self-delusion. His father was a monster who
could not be shaken by the darkness in his soul, for he knew it already. That
left Nish with only one alternative.

Yet how could he betray all he held dear by swearing to his
father? He felt that temptation more strongly now than ever. Nish had always
been ambitious; as a young man he’d dreamed about making something of himself,
having the world look up to him, and pleasing his demanding father too. And
even now
, after all Jal-Nish had done to
him, Nish still felt that urge. He didn’t think he would ever be free of it. As
Jal-Nish’s lieutenant he’d have power, wealth and, most of all, respect. He’d
been respected after his heroic deeds at the end of the lyrinx wars, but no one
could see him as he was now and feel anything but contempt. He was the lowest
of the low, and Nish so desperately wanted to rise again.

But at what price? There was always a price, with his
father. What cruelty, what evil, what brutalities would he require Nish to
carry out to prove his loyalty, or just for Jal-Nish’s own amusement?