The Fate of the Fallen (The Song of the Tears Book 1) (74 page)

A red mouthful poured out, splashing on the stone and
running into the cursed flame, which blazed as high as the ceiling, fleetingly
revealing something of the size and magnificence of the ancient chamber, before
dying down again. Directly above him, a pyramidal conduit led up into darkness,
perhaps to the obelisk itself.

Phrune gagged and one hand slipped over the edge of the
slab, but he recovered and directed the next mouthful into the flame. He
gasped, his eyes protruded; he spat a few stringy drops into the blaze then
fell forwards, his head thudding to the slab beside the hole.

His back arched and enough blood to fill a saucepan poured
out of him, then a series of clots the size of fried eggs, followed by
something white that oozed out and flopped into the hole like a thick white
worm, or a piece of intestine.

Maelys felt sick. She couldn’t bear to look at him; at what
she’d done to him. She wanted to run away but the crystal still had to be
charged at the flame, and Phrune was in the way. He was shrunken now. His
formerly plump skin had gone saggy and transparent. One hand kept twitching,
sliding back and forth across the slab, but there was no life in his eyes.

She tried to heave him out of the way but he toppled off,
hitting the floor with a flabby splat. She winced, then fed the rest of the
amber-wood into the flame, hoping it would overcome the curse sufficiently for
her to try again.

Taking a deep breath, she put her hand, holding the crystal,
into the flame. It was hotter now, unpleasantly so, but she held her hand there
for the count of thirty, until the tingling began again. Had she recharged the
crystal? She couldn’t tell, though it was brighter than before.

The taphloid still hung from his neck. She wiped it on
Phrune’s shirt then pulled the chain over his head, wrapped it and put it in
her pocket. She’d have to scrub both taphloid and chain before she could bear
to put it on.

Monkshart’s feet scrabbled on the floor. Surely he wasn’t
recovering already? Maelys stumbled into the nearest shadows, concealing her
clenched fist inside her pocket, for the crystal was growing brighter every
second. So much flame had been trapped there that its light was making her
fingers glow red. She dared not let him see. Maelys wasn’t game to take
Monkshart on, whatever his condition.

He crawled out from under the slab and stood up, shakily.
His eyes were open. The last ruined skin of his face was flaking off to reveal
smooth, olive-dark skin that looked too young for a man of his age. Breathing
raspily, he scooped congealed blood from the floor under the flame and rubbed
it all over his body, even on the soles of his feet. By the time he’d finished,
the skin he’d treated first was already flaking off.

He scoured the rest away with the backs of his hands, then
held his arms out in front of him as if he couldn’t see and took a few halting
steps, holding onto the edge of the slab with both hands.

‘Phrune?’ he said in a wispy voice. ‘Phrune, faithful
friend, where are you?’

Phrune did not answer. Monkshart continued around the slab,
blind eyes searching the darkness. One foot kicked the body. He crouched down,
painfully, and felt around and along it.

‘Phrune?’ he whispered, stroking his acolyte’s swollen face,
his bloody, lacerated mouth. ‘
Phrune!
’

The cry hinted at such depths of anguish that it sent a
shudder down Maelys’s spine. They were monsters both, yet they had depended on
each other – perhaps even loved each other in some twisted way, and she
was moved by his agony, and his loss.

Monkshart prostrated himself over the body of the smaller
man, weeping. ‘Phrune, Phrune, what will I ever do without you?’

He picked Phrune up, holding him in his arms with the
younger man’s arms and legs flopping like the limbs of a cloth doll. A dribble
of blood must have run into the hole then, for the cursed flame flared high
again and in the sudden brightness Maelys saw that Monkshart was weeping. Tears
of blood were oozing from his swollen eyes and falling onto Phrune’s cheek.

He stood there for such a long time that she was tempted to
sneak around behind him and attack. She knew she should; one swift blow with
the knife and his troubles would be over. And hers as well.

She was trying to find strength for the terrible,
cold-blooded deed when something reminded her of the futures she’d seen in the
Pit, and she faltered. What if this evil man were the key to Santhenar’s future
– a good future? How could she tell? Her blow might usher in a worse
world than the one she lived in now.

Monkshart let out another wrenching cry and the opportunity
was lost as he fell to his knees and pushed Phrune’s still body under the slab.
Monkshart scrambled on top and, with the fallen stiletto, carved a curving line
across his own great chest, allowing his blood to fall directly into the flame.

This time it flared so high that it shrivelled the mucous
crusts on the high ceiling. Monkshart’s wound soon scabbed over, however, and once
it did, he half scrambled, half fell off and crawled in to Phrune. Shortly he
gave a third anguished wail and came out again, his long head darting around
wildly, his blind eyes open and staring.

Maelys eased back into the shadows, for he was looking for
her and she knew he was bent on a terrible revenge.

‘You’ll pay for this, Maelys Nifferlin,’ he said in a voice
as thick as the curdled blood on the floor. ‘I know Black Arts that can make a
corpse scream in agony, that can torment even a bodiless spirit and cause
lifeless bones to chatter in terror. You’ll pay and pay, and keep on paying a
hundred years after your agonising death.’

He turned towards the shadows where she hid, trembling in
every limb, opening his clenched fists into hooked claws. The cursed flame was
burning in him and right through him now. He glowed in the dark; flames dripped
like burning water from his knuckles and elbows, and the tip of his long nose.

Maelys couldn’t move; couldn’t speak, for she was frozen
with terror. Even in the darkness he could see her, yet he was blind. She
didn’t have the stamina to outrun him; certainly couldn’t hide from him.

He began to stalk her, an awful smile on his lips –
like mad, frozen rage. His head was covered in Phrune’s dried blood. Bloodstains
ran down his chest and patches of flaking skin were stuck all over him. He
looked like a week-dead corpse that had been brought back to life, and nothing
could stop him. Nothing!

He was just a few paces away when there came another
colossal thump, like the one Maelys had heard earlier. Monkshart stopped, one
foot in the air, took another step, then stopped again, head cocked. She made
out a whistling sound from high above.

Monkshart looked blindly into the darkness, head tilted up.
‘He comes!’

Maelys edged backwards, trying not to make a sound. Her
mouth was as dry as the crusts that had fallen from the ceiling.

‘I’ll be back for you, Maelys.’ Monkshart turned aside, trod
on her staff, picked it up and tap-tapped his way into the darkness away from
the triangular stairs.

She wasn’t game to run after him now and attack him while
his back was turned. She had no courage left. Making sure the crystal was
secure, Maelys headed back the way she had come. It had been a stroke of luck
remembering that amber-wood was blessed as well as lucky, and a bigger one that
its virtue had countered the curse of the flame sufficiently to remove her
paralysis. But maybe that was the fortune of the amber-wood. She’d burned
enough of it for a lifetime of good luck.

Maelys prayed that hers would hold long enough for her to
get back to the hut, and that she could do something to help her friends when
she got there, though even once she climbed out into the fresh, wind-whipped
air of the mire she couldn’t get the smell of Phrune’s blood out of her
nostrils.

 
FIFTY-TWO

In the cavern, the God-Emperor was silent for a long
time. He appeared to be consulting Reaper, though about what, Nish could not
imagine. His father’s power passed all comprehension. Finally Jal-Nish smiled
thinly behind his mask. ‘It’s seems there’s more going on here than I’d
thought. Where is the other one – the girl?’

‘Are you telling me you don’t know, Father?’ said Nish.
‘Surely you’re not admitting to a weakness?’

‘Spare me your third-rate taunts, Son; you’ve never had the
ability to sting me. You might as well say, for I can soon find out by calling
to Gatherer. Not all the amber-wood in the world can hide her from me, this
close.’

Nish knew it to be true, but he didn’t think his father
could see into Maelys’s heart with the tears, and so he risked a lie. ‘She
broke during the horror of Flydd’s renewal and fled into the mires. We were
fighting your bladder-bats and flappeters at the time and didn’t see her go.’

‘My Imperial Guard will soon take her, unless the
stink-snappers get her first. It makes no difference, either way.’ Jal-Nish
surveyed them each in turn, first Nish, then Zham, Colm and finally Flydd, and
not even Flydd could hold the God-Emperor’s adamantine gaze. ‘I’ve
reconsidered.’

Nish looked sceptical. ‘Yes, I know you believe that I never
go back on a threat,’ his father went on, ‘but a man can change his mind.
Indeed, when circumstances change, he must change with them, or fail. And so,
because I do admire the courage you’ve shown, and your boldness and tenacity, I
will offer each of you a choice. Save you, Flydd.
You’re mine!
But that lingering pleasure I plan to keep till last.’

Nish didn’t believe his father for a moment. This had to be
another of his malicious games.

Jal-Nish slipped his hand into Reaper and Nish heard the
windlasses whirr and the cables creak. Through the mossy curtain he could see
the sky palace moving away until it was just a speck in the distance, connected
to the cave only by the greatly lengthened and perilous plank.

‘For our privacy,’ said the God-Emperor. ‘Cryl-Nish, you
will be first. You have one last chance, but I’m not going to make a song and
dance of it like some villain in a melodrama. I’ll put it simply. I want you by
my side. You’re all I have now – you
are
all, aren’t you? If you’ve got a child into the belly of this Maelys girl, say
the word and I’ll recover her from the mires in an instant.’

Nish considered lying and saying that he had made Maelys
pregnant, to save her, but what if she had escaped? If Jal-Nish discovered that
he’d lied, it would condemn her. ‘I’ve not touched her in that way, Father.’

‘Really?’ said Jal-Nish. ‘Then what about the hundreds of
girls Vivimord plied you with while you were playing at being the Deliverer?
Surely you’ve impregnated one or two of them?’

His father had always belittled Nish’s efforts. Perhaps that
was why he so craved success, greatness, adulation. But he answered truthfully.
‘I’ve had intimate relations with no one since my escape from Mazurhize.’

‘You astound me. Why ever not? Surely you haven’t lost
–’

‘I desired every one of them, Father. My lust was like a
live animal inside me, gnawing at my vitals, but I would not give in to
Monkshart and let him manipulate me so crudely.’

Jal-Nish considered that, head to one side. ‘There’s more to
you than I’d thought. Very well, I have a proposition for you.’

‘Yes?’ Nish said hoarsely, feeling his heart making wild,
erratic thumps. ‘What is it this time?’

Jal-Nish took a deep breath, didn’t speak for a long moment,
then said hastily, as if it had taken all his courage, ‘Come back to me,
Cryl-Nish. Serve me willingly, because you care for your father.’ He held up
his hand as Nish opened his mouth to speak.

‘No, allow me to finish. I’ve done evil, Son. Terrible, terrible
evil, for a long time. I admit it and I wish to make amends. With you by my
side, helping to show me the right path, the path you’ve largely followed since
your salutary flogging at the manufactory, I hope and pray that I can make
amends. Well, what do you say?’

Of all appeals his father might have made, this was the
least expected, and Nish didn’t know how to respond. The offer tempted him
unbearably, because it expressed the line of his own earlier thoughts. For a
long time he’d clung to the hope that if he joined his father he could turn him
aside from evil. How Nish wanted to. And if he gained power and respect for
himself that way, surely that would be a path to greatness he could feel proud
of?

Nish was about to say yes when his eye fell upon his
father’s hand, still partly enveloped in Reaper as he fondled the Profane Tear
with which he had caused so much suffering. No, Nish thought, this is wrong.
Father is the very God of Liars and he’s lying to me now.

Or was he? What if he were sincere? Nish couldn’t believe
that Jal-Nish was sincere, but anything was possible with his father. How was
he to decide?

He looked around the cavern but the faces of his companions
were no help. If only Irisis were here, he thought foolishly. She would know in
an instant. He tried to conjure up her image but this time nothing came. He
could only rely on his judgement, and he was dreadfully afraid that he was
going to make the wrong choice.

Nish wanted desperately to take up his father’s offer. He
yearned for it, but was afraid he wanted it for all the wrong reasons: not for
the hope of turning an evil man to good, but rather for the acclamation he,
Nish, would gain if he did so. For the glory, the power, the respect, and also
for the possibility that Jal-Nish really could give him what he wanted most in
all the world.

In the moment of that realisation, Nish knew his father was
lying, manipulating him, and he had to refuse his offer. It hurt bitterly, but
there was no choice.