The Fate of the Fallen (The Song of the Tears Book 1) (57 page)

Nish’s mouth was opening and closing like a stranded fish.
He couldn’t think of anything to say. Words were quite inadequate to express
his mortification, but he had to try. ‘I – I’m terribly sorry. I didn’t
know.’

‘Well, now you do. That’s the kind of master you follow,
Nish. But not me. I’ll abandon my duty to my mother and aunts before I help you
serve such a monster again.’

‘I’m … sorry I left you behind. Sorry about everything.’ It
was the only thing he could think of to say and it wasn’t nearly enough. He
couldn’t face her, much less what he had done.

‘I think I’ll step down the cleft a bit,’ said Zham, who
looked as though he’d tasted something unpleasant. ‘Coming, Thommel?’

At first Thommel had appeared to be enjoying Nish’s
mortification, but now he was gazing at his feet, shaking his head. Zham took
him by the arm and they passed around the outcrop and down the cleft out of
sight.

Nish and Maelys looked at one another, but each turned aside
at the same moment. Maelys was wretched, as if all her expectations had been
bitterly dashed, and he felt no better. He’d never wanted to hurt her.

And, Nish ruminated, she’d proven her courage and loyalty
many times over. She’d followed him all this way, even through the maze, and he
couldn’t imagine how she’d managed that. She’d tended him after the battle,
receiving not a word of thanks for it. She’d undoubtedly lit the camp fire
which had shown him the way here. She was an astonishingly clever and
persistent woman and he owed her more than he could ever repay.

He had to try, even at the risk of encouraging those
unwelcome feelings which had so disturbed him previously. ‘Maelys,’ he said,
stepping towards her. ‘Can we start again?’

After a long pause she nodded stiffly, then gestured to a
rock next to the fire. He sat down. Maelys perched on another rock, well back
across the fire.

‘Why don’t you go first?’ said Nish. It seemed easier that
way.

Maelys told him what had happened to her in Tifferfyte, of
all her hopes and fears for him, and her feelings of abandonment after finding
herself all alone.

Nish listened in silence, shaking his head. How could he
have been duped so easily, even in the emergency of the attack? His admiration
for her only grew when she told, baldly, of the escape through the maze, the
attack by Phrune, and how she’d found the Defiance with Tulitine. It shamed him
to learn of her faithful service as a healer, despite all he’d done to her.
Truly, she was as much a hero as the greatest heroes of the Great Tales, and
look how he’d treated her.

He could also see how her courage and inner strength had
grown in the past month, and for the first time he wondered, if things had
turned out differently, if they might have had a chance together. It was too
late now. He knew that as soon as she told him about Thommel saving her from
the slurchie. Nish didn’t think she was falling for Thommel, but he’d acted
like a real man and it had shown Nish up for the callow fool he was. Her
girlish infatuation with him, and surely that was all it had been, was over. He
regretted that now.

After she’d finished, Nish ended up telling her the full
tale of what had happened to him over the past month. It helped a little,
though not enough. The damage had already been done.

 
FORTY

This cleft, the main one of the four which formed the
cloverleaf shape of the plateau, was wider and deeper than the others, a
winding, precipitous ravine choked with fractured rocks and fallen trees,
though Thommel thought it could be negotiated most of the way to the top. The
uppermost hundred spans appeared extremely steep and difficult, but couldn’t be
seen clearly due to the cloud.

They began the climb at first light, in a chilly silence.
Maelys couldn’t bring herself to patch things up with Nish. How dare he judge
her, or imply that she was more than friends with Thommel? She wasn’t, as it
happened, though she might have been. Thommel had made one or two oblique
suggestions in that regard but she’d turned them aside, not because she didn’t
care for him, but because she didn’t want to complicate her life even further
just now. However it was none of Nish’s business if she had been Thommel’s
lover.

Nish had gone ahead, thankfully, for she could not have
borne his eyes on her, judging her. Why was he so upset about her closeness to
Thommel? Did Thommel remind Nish of his own failings, or did he think the
woodsman was a better and more deserving man, one able to rise above all he’d
endured while he, Nish, could not? He was as silent as a spectre. She was
grateful for that, too.

The climb proved exhausting and dangerous. The sky was clear
now, save for the clouds gathered at the top of the peak. It wasn’t raining as
they set out but foaming streams of water flowed down the low points of the
ravine, over and under the boulders, constantly splitting and reforming, and
becoming little waterfalls at every obstacle.

The shattered rocks were so slippery that Maelys had to test
every foot-hold before putting her weight on it. It was already hot and, though
the sun did not shine directly into the cleft at this time of year, as the
morning heated up it was like climbing in a steam bath.

Above her, Nish stopped to take off his shirt and she wished
she could do the same. His pale, scarred back was running with sweat and his
knees were wobbly. Several times he caught at Zham’s strong arm, but let go as
soon as he’d steadied himself, glancing back as if anxious that his weakness
had been noted. Maelys pretended she hadn’t seen. Though inured to steep climbs
from the time she’d taken her first steps, she was struggling too.

They laboured up some fifty spans, stopped just long enough for
her screaming muscles to relax into a jelly-like state, then moved up another
thirty spans. And so it went on, for hours of the most exhausting labour she’d
ever undertaken. Please, please stop, she kept thinking, though Maelys was too
proud to ask for a rest. If Nish could do it without complaint, so could she.

At last, when she was so tired that she had to talk herself
into taking each step, ‘Just one more’ and ‘Just one more’, Thommel stopped
suddenly and threw himself down on a rock.

‘This must be halfway. Let’s take a break.’

Nish lay on his back, gasping, his face scarlet. It was
around eleven o’clock. Using dry kindling from his pack and damp wood, Thommel
lit a smouldering fire on the steep side of the ravine and boiled water for
tea. It tasted like warm, smoky mould.

As they set off, far too soon, it began to drizzle and drip
down the back of Maelys’s neck. In the airless conditions that only made things
more uncomfortable.

The rain became heavier as they climbed, and shortly a
cooling breeze began to drift up the cleft. She pulled out her shirt and
allowed the breeze to flow over her wet skin. It made a refreshing change from
the unceasing heat and humidity she’d been enduring ever since emerging from
the maze.

As they climbed higher the whole sky clouded over and the
rain became pleasantly chilly though the wind grew ever stronger. By noon it
was a blistering updraught, which gusted one way then another so fiercely that
Maelys sometimes had to hunch down, clinging to the rock, until the worst had
passed. Once her fingers were torn away from their handhold and she was driven
sideways into the sheer wall of the cleft. She got up, rubbing her bruised
shoulder. No one had noticed; they were struggling on, backs bent and heads
bowed, but the gusts blasted the cold rain into their eyes no matter which way
they turned.

After another exhausting couple of hours they stopped for
lunch. Neither Zham nor Thommel had hunted in days and all they had to eat was
flour and water pancakes cooked in the last of their dripping. They proved as
tasteless as everything else she’d eaten lately, and quite as mouldy, though at
least they were hot. Maelys licked her fingers and pulled her jacket more
tightly around her, for the wind at this altitude cut right through her flimsy
lowland clothes, and on her wet skin it was freezing.

‘I don’t like the look of that,’ said Zham, staring upwards.
A few minutes’ climb above them an ever-thickening fog whited everything out.

‘How far do we have to go?’ Nish asked exhaustedly.

‘Another couple of hundred spans,’ said Thommel. ‘Two hours
in these conditions, I dare say.’

‘I don’t think I can go another minute,’ said Nish.

Maelys didn’t think she could either, but she said nothing.
It was after two that afternoon when they set off again, into the fog layer
which had steadily crept down until it was just above them. Their progress was
even slower now, for every surface was thickly coated with either saturated
moss or an algal slime, and though Zham was supporting Nish all the way, they
had to stop frequently for him to rest. Consequently it was well after four
when they climbed over a steep notch in the rock, the fog thinned temporarily
and ahead of them the ravine, while still sloping steeply up, opened out until
it was about twenty paces across. They could just see the lower sides, though
not the top.

‘What’s that?’ said Zham, listening.

The song of the wind had changed. Overlaying the shrill
wailing as it streamed over the rocks was a hissing noise, coming from above.

‘It’s wind rushing through grass or heath,’ said Nish,
staring up eagerly. ‘We’re nearly there.’

‘Just as well,’ said Thommel. ‘It’s not long to sunset.’

‘This is a good place to camp,’ said Zham, pulling a fallen
branch out of a copse of almost leafless, wind-writhen trees that looked a
thousand years old. ‘I’ll make a fire.’

Yes, please, Maelys thought, but Nish said, ‘I’ve come a
long way for this. Let’s get to the top and find what we’re looking for.’

He plodded on, up and up with Zham, but after a minute Nish
stopped suddenly, looking down at his boot. From somewhere above them came a
loud wooden clap.

‘What was that?’ said Thommel.

‘I don’t know.’ Zham sounded worried. ‘Extra careful now.’

‘I thought I caught my foot on something,’ said Nish, ‘but
there’s nothing here.’

They moved up into wind-churned cloud so dense that Maelys
couldn’t see Nish’s feet above her, nor Thommel’s head below. She felt as
though she was climbing all by herself up a mountain that went on forever.

‘I’m at the top,’ came Zham’s rumbling voice.

At last. The final ten steps were so hard on her knees that
she thought she was going to topple backwards into Thommel, but the wind kicked
her in the back, lifting the weight off her legs just long enough for Maelys to
scramble the last few steps up the cleft and stand on the rim of the plateau,
more than a thousand spans, or two thousand vertical paces, above the unseen
rainforest.

Nish stood an arm’s length away, staring about him into the
fog and breathing heavily. He turned and his gaze crossed hers for a moment.
Maelys tensed, until she realised that he wasn’t even thinking about her. Their
fight last night was trivial compared to his expectations of Thuntunnimoe,
Mistmurk Mountain: his goal, vision and dream for the past month, and the repository
of all his hopes for the future.

All Maelys could see were curved rocks covered in moss
mounds, reed-fringed bogs and still grey pools. A faint track led along the
edge of the plateau, though it didn’t look as though it had been made by
humans.

‘Where is it?’ Nish said, turning around again. ‘What is
it?’

‘Careful,’ Zham laid a restraining hand on Nish’s shoulder.
‘It’d be easy to walk off the edge in the fog.’ Nish shook it off.

‘Should have brought staffs to feel our way,’ muttered
Thommel. ‘It’s always like this up here.’

‘How would you know?’ Nish said suspiciously. Thommel knew
too much and his appearance seemed just a little to convenient.

‘You can see the cloud hanging over these peaks from twenty
leagues away.’

‘Stay here. I’ll go down to that copse and cut some
timbers.’ Zham disappeared down the cleft.

Nish wandered off. The top of the plateau was flat here, and
saturated. Maelys stepped the other way and her right foot plunged into a
knee-deep pool covered by green strands of algae. Jumping backwards, she
emptied the cold water from her boot, put it back on and turned left onto what
she thought was rock. Her left foot sank into a bog concealed by floating moss;
yellow ooze enveloped her to mid-calf. She went backwards to surer ground near
the plateau’s rim, swearing under her breath, sat down to clean herself up and
decided to wait for Zham.

The fog parted and she saw Nish five or six paces away,
treading carefully between the pools. ‘This looks safe enough,’ he said over
his shoulder, went forwards and sank to the waist.

He looked so shocked that Maelys couldn’t help herself. All
her resentment burst out in a series of giggles that grew louder and more
infectious until Thommel began to roar with laughter, and neither of them went
to help Nish out.

He pulled himself up onto the edge, scowling and cascading
red-brown water. ‘Very funny!’ he said coldly, took a step to the left and went
into another pothole.

This time they did help him, for he’d gone in to the neck
and the sides were so slippery that he couldn’t climb them.

‘You’ve got to follow those brown streaks,’ said Thommel,
waving his hand at a series of barely visible meandering marks. ‘They’re the
only places you can be sure to tread safely.’

‘How would you know?’ Nish said sourly.

‘I’ve climbed some of these peaks before,’ Thommel said
expressionlessly.

‘Really? How come you’re only telling us now?’

Thommel shrugged. ‘You didn’t ask.’

Nish gave him an even sourer look and set off, following one
of the brown streaks.