The Fate of the Fallen (The Song of the Tears Book 1) (62 page)

‘No, you’re not yet of age. You’re still subject to their
authority. They would have laid it upon you as a solemn and binding duty to the
family, which you must carry out no matter the cost to yourself.’

‘Yes,’ she whispered.

‘So what went wrong? You’re a lovely girl of good family,
desirable in every respect, and Nish is a man who appreciates beautiful women
yet has been deprived of a lover for ten years. Why wouldn’t he have you?’

‘Surr,’ she said, trying vainly to prevent the mortifying
tears forming, ‘you’re torturing me.’

‘I’ve got to know what really ails Nish, deep down, and
he’ll never tell me. I don’t wish to hurt you but you’re the one person I can
ask.’

‘I can’t say, Xervish.’

‘Why not?’

‘I just can’t. It would be like betraying a confidence.’

‘I have to know,’ he said sternly. ‘I don’t want to force
you but I will if I have to. And you know I can do it.’

She did, so there was no point denying him. ‘All right. It’s
Irisis!’

‘Irisis!’ he frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

‘He’s obsessed by her to the point of madness. He can’t even
think of having another woman, for in his mind Irisis is perfection in every
respect, and no one else will do. In his delirium he talked about her as though
she was still alive.’

‘He’s obsessed by a woman
ten years dead
?’ Flydd looked grave.

‘He keeps saying she has a destiny, but how can that be?’

He did not reply. ‘I knew Irisis well.’ Flydd smiled at a
memory; momentarily it lit him up from within. ‘She was a wonderful woman, but
perfection – far from it! She would have been the first person to tell
you her faults. What happened when you tried to seduce him? I assume you did
try to do your duty?’

‘Surr!’ she cried. ‘I can’t – please don’t ask me
about such things …’

‘But I am asking you, Maelys, and I must insist that you
answer me. This is the most important question anyone has ever put to you.
Nish’s fate may rest on it, and yours. And your family’s.’

‘It was wickedly wrong,’ she whispered, tears streaming down
her cheeks. ‘I knew that, despite that it was my duty and I was doing it to
save my family. But I had no choice, did I?’ He didn’t answer, just continued
to look into her eyes as if he could read the tiniest falsehood, and shortly
she continued. ‘I’ve never been with a man, Xervish, not even a kiss at the
midsummer fair, and this was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. But I did
my duty. I tried my best, just as my aunt had instructed me in the arts of … of
seduction.’

She covered her face but he took her hands away and tilted
her face up so the misty light fell on it. ‘I don’t need to know the
embarrassing details, but I do need to know how Nish reacted.’

‘He went into a cold rage and accused me of trying to steal
him away from his beloved, then told me never to come near him again. I felt
that I disgusted him; that it made him sick to look at me. It was the most
awful moment of my life, Xervish … worse than anything that’s happened since
– even with Phrune.’

Flydd didn’t embrace her, or say anything until she had
cried herself out, for which Maelys was grateful. She turned her tear-stained
face to him. ‘I suppose I deserved it –’

‘Stupid fool!’ He crashed a fist into his palm and swore a
series of oaths she’d never heard before. She shrank away. ‘Not you, Maelys.
This is worse than I could have imagined. Irisis is ten years dead and nothing
but mouldering bones in a coffin. What can be the matter with him?’

He got up and splashed through the swamp, limping around and
around the rock, heedless of his surroundings. On the third circuit his
meandering path took him near a well-hidden stink-snapper, and as he went by it
shot up out of the mire, its yellow-spined jaws gaping.

‘Xervish!’ she yelled as it snapped at his thigh.

He directed a wobbly but well-aimed kick at it, whereupon it
withdrew until just the yellow spines were visible. He finished the circuit
then came back to sit beside her. ‘We’re old adversaries, the stink-snappers
and I,’ he said with a rueful grin, and sat head down, deep in thought.

Maelys didn’t want to interrupt his deliberations, but she’d
remembered something that could be vital. ‘Irisis is more than mouldering
bones, Xervish.’

His head jerked up. ‘What do you mean?’

‘The God-Emperor has her embalmed body in his quarters, with
her head sewed back on. He showed it … her to Nish, and Nish said she looked
just as she did in life. As if she were but sleeping.’

Flydd hooked his bony fingers into claws. ‘This is bad,
Maelys. Very bad indeed, and I don’t know what I’m going to do about it.’

‘Are you going to tell him?’

‘Tell him what, girl?’

‘About … you know.’ She was flushing again.

‘Use the words, Maelys, and they’ll begin to lose their
power over you.’

There was something about Flydd that made her feel so much
better; more confident in herself. ‘Are you going to tell him that I … was
trying to seduce him, so as to get his baby into my belly?’

‘No. Why should I?’

‘You’re his oldest friend. Don’t you think he needs to
know?’

‘He doesn’t need me to hold his hand. Besides,’ he eyed her
up and down again, ‘I like you, Maelys. You could be just what he needs.’

A man who’s in love with a corpse. She compared it to the
way Thommel had cared for her on the journey, always being there when she
needed him and asking for nothing in return. And making her laugh, too. ‘But is
Nish what I need?’

FORTY-THREE

Nish was not exactly drunk but, leaning back against
the wall of the hut with a full belly, the liqueur singing warmly through his
veins and even an occasional ray of late afternoon sunshine breaking through
the fog, he felt pleasantly tipsy. He had absolute faith in Flydd now. Of
course he’d think of something. He always did.

Where was Flydd, anyway? He’d gone off with Maelys hours
ago. Nish got up, staggered and had to support himself on the wall of the hut.
His touch on the crumbling red amber-wood released a drift of its enchanting
aroma, which helped clear his head.

He looked around blearily. Zham was slumped against the wall
of the hut, snoring. The empty flask lay on the ground on its side, plus
another of lesser quality but quite extraordinary flavour. Nish couldn’t
imagine what Flydd had made it from. Thommel was nowhere to be seen. Out of the
shelter of the hut Nish noticed that a strong cross-wind had blown up from the
west and the fog was clearing rapidly, as if one of the peak’s rare clear days,
or nights, was approaching. He could see nearly halfway across the plateau.

Ah, there was Flydd, stalking in from the edge with Maelys
on his arm. Nish turned towards him, grinning. ‘What is it with you and women,
Xervish?’ he said jovially, realising that he was slurring his words but not
caring. ‘You’re the ugliest old coot in the world, yet you’ve always got one on
your arm.’

Maelys gave him a disgusted look and moved away, knotting
and unknotting her fingers. What was the matter with her? Flydd turned the
other way. The last of the fog dispersed and Nish could see for leagues in
every direction, even beyond the rainforest east and north to the coast. That
smudge on the northern horizon must be the city of Roros, the capital of
Crandor and the greatest city in the world.

As Nish rotated to admire the view, the sun dropped below
the jagged, threatening peaks of the
Wahn
Barre
, and the temperature dropped sharply. He pulled his damp coat around
him, the good mood fading.

‘I need to talk to you in private,’ said Flydd, frowning,
‘but clearly now isn’t the time. Where’s Thommel?’

Nish shrugged. ‘I don’t know where he went.’ He had a vague
memory of him taking exception to something Nish had said, but couldn’t
remember what. ‘He’s a surly brute. I hope he’s up to his neck in the mire.’

‘He’s warm-hearted, gentle and brave.
He
helped me when I was in trouble,’ said Maelys.

Nish had too, though leaving with Monkshart had cancelled
those good deeds out and he felt guilty about it. He covered it by sneering,
‘I’ll bet he did.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ she snapped.

‘Nothing,’ he muttered, regretting it already. The liqueur
had disconnected his brain from his mouth.

She glared at him, hands on hips. ‘Thommel is a gentleman,
which is more than I can say for you. If it hadn’t been for him, you never
would have found this place, or Xervish.’

Her casual use of his old friend’s first name irritated
Nish. He’d known Flydd for years before he’d felt comfortable calling him Xervish.
He opened his mouth to snap back but Flydd elbowed him painfully in the ribs.

‘Stop bickering and come inside, children. This wind cuts
right through to my bones.’

Maelys stirred Zham and they followed Flydd to the hut, Zham
carrying the bench for no reason Nish could fathom. There were two lanterns on
the wall but Flydd lit a handful of rushlights, which gave the hut a homely
glow. It was small and rough-hewn, but more comfortable than Nish had
previously thought; far nicer than his cell. The earth floor around the table
was strewn with dried rushes. Flydd lit a small fire fuelled with neatly
squared blocks of dried peat from a covered stack behind the hut.

Later, with another meal in his belly, his back resting
against the wall and warm hands and feet for the first time since he’d climbed
to the plateau, Nish’s irritability disappeared. He sat there, blinking in the
firelight until he found himself drifting off.

He woke suddenly as the door burst open. Thommel was
shouting, ‘Lights! There are lights
everywhere
.’

‘Wha–?’ Nish said stupidly, sitting up. The west wind
was howling around the corners of the hut, shaking the walls. His head throbbed
and he felt as though he was going to throw up. He bit down on the urge.
Everyone was shouting at once.

‘Enough!’ Flydd’s voice cut through the babble. ‘What
lights?’

Thommel was breathing heavily, as if he’d been running.
‘Camp fires. Thousands of them, regularly arranged. Like a mighty army.’

‘It’s the God-Emperor,’ said Maelys, unconsciously moving
away from the firelight.

‘Where are they, Thommel?’ said Flydd. ‘They must be close
or you wouldn’t have seen them through the rainforest.’

‘They’re directly below us, all around the eastern side of
Thuntunnimoe. They could be on the other sides as well – I didn’t wait to
check. And away to the south-east, I saw the glow of camp fires along the
river. That must be the Defiance.’

‘How could the army have found this place? Could the
Defiance have led them here?’

‘I don’t see how,’ said Thommel. ‘Their fires are a long way
off.’

‘I walk the rim of the plateau every night,’ said Flydd.
Outlined against the firelight, he looked like a skin-covered skeleton. ‘And
every so often the fog thins enough to see down momentarily. If they’d camped
around any of the other peaks I would have seen the glow of their fires, but I
never have. The army came straight here, so either they followed you or tracked
you by some uncanny means.’

‘They couldn’t have followed us, surr,’ said Zham. ‘In the
first few days we walked up the beds of streams until our boots were rotting.’

‘We covered our tracks just as well,’ said Maelys. ‘And saw
no one behind us the whole way, save flappeters a long way back, just after we
got here.’

‘They tracked one of you,’ said Flydd, sitting down. ‘Now
how could they possibly do that?’

‘I have no idea,’ said Nish, absently rubbing his scar.

‘Why do you keep doing that?’ said Flydd irritably.

‘It’s where the nylatl stung me with one of its tail spines.
It’s still itchy.’

Flydd shot upright. ‘You didn’t tell me it had
stung
you. Why would a nylatl sting you
when it could have torn your throat out?’

‘I don’t know.’ Nish still felt dull from the drink. ‘Now
you mention it, it does seem odd.’

‘It was just crouching there, staring at him,’ said Zham.
‘It could have killed him easily, but …’

‘Maybe it didn’t want to,’ Flydd mused. ‘Yet savage,
terrifying killing is the very reason the nylatl were created. Who could have
kept one for all this time?’

‘What if it wasn’t meant to kill?’ said Maelys. ‘What if the
attack was intended to disguise something else?’

‘Ahh!’ said Flydd. ‘That’s the answer. The first
assassination attempt was intended to fail, Nish, and the assassin to die, so
you’d
think
someone – perhaps
your own father – was trying to kill you.’

‘That doesn’t make sense,’ said Maelys.

‘It does if you’re God-Emperor, and paranoid. As the leader
of a popular revolution, Nish would be too great a threat, for not even the
power of the tears could save Jal-Nish if the entire world turned against him.
Nish, you were meant to think that Jal-Nish wanted you dead so you’d assume the
real attack, by the nylatl, was another attempt on your life.’ He lit a couple
of lanterns. ‘Give me a look at that scar.’

‘What?’ said Nish sluggishly.

Flydd tore Nish’s shirt open and pressed a fingertip hard
against the round purple scar below his right collarbone.

Nish gasped. ‘That hurts.’

‘Of course it hurts, you damn fool. Part of the spine is
still in there. Why didn’t you get Zham to take it out?’

‘I didn’t know it was there. The wound closed over and it
had healed by the next day.’

‘And you, of all people, weren’t suspicious?’ growled Flydd.
‘You know nylatl wounds never heal cleanly, or quickly. Zham, you’ll have a
sharp little knife on you.’

Zham drew a small, narrow-bladed dagger from his right boot
sheath and handed it over.

‘That’ll do nicely. Hold still, Nish.’