The Fate of the Fallen (The Song of the Tears Book 1) (14 page)

Rurr-shyve began moving back and forth, testing the ropes.
Nish eyed the knots, praying that Maelys had tied them securely. The ropes must
be enchanted to prevent flappeters from biting through them.

Rurr-shyve tore up a clump of ferns as if they were lettuce
and began to grind them to paste, slimy saliva dripping from the gapes of its
maw. Ferns were poisonous to most creatures but it seemed unaffected.

Nish noticed that his hands were filthy, despite his time in
the water. His nails were long and splintered, his matted hair hung down his
back and his stench was as great a pollution of the sweet air of the glade as
Rurr-shyve’s noisome belches. His odour was an unpleasant reminder of prison,
and of a life controlled by his father; he could change that, at least. He
rose, unsteadily, for his head felt slightly disconnected from his body, and
stumbled across to the boy, who was sleeping soundly, head pillowed on his clasped
hands.

Taking the belt, sheath and knife, Nish went upstream until
he found a pool in the rocks. He hacked his hair off until it was just the
length of a thumb joint, cut his beard even shorter, trimmed his nails and
cleaned them with the point of the knife. Then he took off his clothes, sank
into the cold water and scrubbed himself with handfuls of sand until his
prison-pale skin was red and every speck of ingrained dirt was gone.

After washing Maelys’s pants and jacket he left them hanging
on a branch to dry, but put the fur-lined leather pants back on. They swam on
him and he needed the belt to hold them up. He left the coat behind, since the
forest here was no colder than his cell in Mazurhize. Donning his socks and
boots, he turned up the slope, revelling in his freedom to do the simplest
things. Freedom! It was the most precious gift of all.

Above him, a rocky spur rose out of the forest. Nish began
to climb it. He needed to see what lay beyond and reassure himself that, for
all his father’s power, there were parts of the world over which he held no
sway.

His legs hurt from last night’s climb, but that was good
too. He was free; he could feel again. He took pleasure in every sensation,
even his weakness and exhaustion, for these were under his control. He could
get his strength back.

The top of the pinnacle was scarily steep but Nish forced
himself to attempt it. Perhaps his father could not be beaten, but he didn’t
control the whole world, or Nish. If Nish couldn’t fight Jal-Nish, he could go
far away to a place where his father’s sway didn’t hold, and make himself a new
life as an ordinary man. It was the only hope he could allow himself.

His racing heart was skipping beats from the unaccustomed
exertion. Nish flopped onto a mossy ledge ten or fifteen spans below the top.
He was nearly at the treetops here, and thus far he’d been concealed by
overhanging branches, but once above them he’d be visible if anyone was
watching from further up the mountain, or from the sky.

He climbed on, slowly now, for he was very tired. The
pinnacle was taller than it looked and his earlier euphoria had begun to fade.
He was even weaker than he’d thought; it would take months to regain his former
strength.

Then, edging around a sharp horn of rock, Nish felt the sun
on his face, the clear, scented air in his nostrils, and his eyes stung with
tears. Sunshine; fresh air; freedom – they were such simple pleasures,
but what else did a man really need? There was no need to go further, so he sat
down, well clear of the edge with his back to the rock, gazing across the
gigantic valley.

It had to be many leagues wide, for the forested slope on
the far side was blue with distance, and the valley ran upstream and down even
further, untouched by human hand. With a sigh, he lay back on the ledge and
closed his eyes, allowing the tension to seep out of his legs, relaxing his
whole body as he’d never been able to relax in prison, trying to think of
nothing at all. That wasn’t easy. He’d always been the slave to an overactive
mind.

But now, with the cool rock beneath him, the warm sun on his
face and a pleasant tiredness in his limbs, the world disappeared and for a
brief while he could be an ordinary man again. There was not a cloud in the
pale sky; no sign of life apart from a hunting bird wheeling in the distance.

Nish was dozing off when his sluggish mind realised that it
couldn’t have been a bird, for it was too long and the wrong shape. It was a
flappeter, searching the forest, and his dungeon-pale skin would stand out
against the dark stone.

Cursing himself for a fool, Nish eased back out of sight. He
didn’t think the beast could have seen him, but where there was one there would
be others. Of course his father’s reach extended to this wilderness; it
probably covered the entire world and he, Nish, would never be able to get away
from him.

Despair bowing his back, he went down the pinnacle as
quickly as his shaky legs would allow. By the time he reached the bottom he was
starving again, so he hurried towards the camp site, collecting the remaining
clothes on the way.

Before he got there an irrational dread crept over him, that
he’d find the boy slain and a force of soldiers waiting for him, and it grew
stronger with every step. He told himself that he had nothing to fear but his
own terror, and that his father’s power was no greater than people allowed it
to be, but Nish didn’t believe it. Jal-Nish held all the power in the world and
no one could ever beat him.

Beset by feelings of approaching doom, Nish was almost to
the camp site when he heard an odd, snorting rumble. His hackles rose; he eased
the knife out, holding it low in front of him the way he’d been taught during
the war, noting with faint surprise how his muscles remembered what his brain
had forgotten. He began to creep down the steep slope, taking advantage of
every tree and bush, scanning the ground in case he kicked a stone or cracked a
stick underfoot.

The sound grew louder. Nish slid in behind a tree above the
camp site and peered around it, then relaxed. The flap-peter was sleeping, head
tucked under its long neck again, making the beastly equivalent of a snore.

The boy lay still and the camp site looked just as it had
when Nish left it. He was about to move when Rurr-shyve gave an extra-loud
snort, waking the boy, who jerked upright and looked around wildly. His hat
fell off, revealing long black hair plaited and coiled on top of his head. Nish
didn’t think anything of that, for it wasn’t uncommon for men to wear their
hair long, and he’d occasionally seen warriors plait it and tie it up before
battle.

The boy rubbed his chest, grimaced and looked furtively
around the camp site. What was he up to? Not seeing Nish, he unfastened his
shirt and began to pick at a cloth knotted around his chest. The knots were tight
and it took a minute or two to untie them. He drew out a long strip of linen,
sighed in relief and rubbed his chest again, though not in the way a boy would.
Definitely not.

For Nish had glimpsed, unmistakeable even from this
distance, two pale, plump breasts. Maelys was a girl, of course. And thinking
about the hair, the voice, the way she’d moved, he wondered how he could ever
have thought otherwise, even in the dark. Not a young girl either. No child
could have had the presence of mind to do all she’d done.

Nish couldn’t help himself, for he hadn’t seen a woman in
ten years. He just stood there, staring like a yokel, instantly and painfully
aroused. Then Maelys looked up and saw him.

She cried out, whipped her shirt closed and flushed a
brilliant, glowing red. He turned away at once, thinking that it made her even
more of an enigma. Definitely not an experienced young woman. His beautiful
Irisis had once gone into battle with her breasts bared like a warrior queen of
legend, but there had been no woman in the world like Irisis …

That wasn’t a thought he wanted to pursue. Nish came out
from behind the tree, bowed his head and said thickly, ‘I’m really sorry, I
thought you were a boy … I should have called out.’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ she lied, going even redder, if that
were possible. She didn’t look at him, just kept staring at the ground. ‘How
could you have known?’

He came across slowly, reassessing her. An unusually modest
young woman, even for these prudish times, and once again he wondered what she
was doing here. She looked too fresh and innocent to survive alone in the harsh
world. It must have been sheer luck that she’d killed the rider. She’d shown
resourcefulness during their escape, but if Jal-Nish’s troops caught her she’d
be broken so thoroughly that she would never recover. He couldn’t have that on
his conscience. She had to be sent home to her family.

‘Thank you for all you did last night,’ he said. ‘I would
not have thought it possible, but now –’

She nodded stiffly. ‘I was just doing my duty.’ She managed
a fleeting smile. ‘You seem better.’

‘I feel so much better.’ He rubbed his clean, spiky stubble.
It didn’t feel like him at all and that was good, too. ‘You can’t imagine what
it’s like, not to bathe for ten years.’

She looked down again, the colour starting to fade. Maelys
was an attractive little thing; almost pretty with that ink-black hair, flushed
skin and shining eyes – but so young. And his father’s spies were nearby.

‘I saw a flappeter circling, from up there.’ Nish pointed. ‘They’re
looking for us.’

She took a deep, shuddering breath. ‘Then we’re trapped.’

‘The forest goes as far as I could see. If it’s dark tonight
–’

‘There’s nowhere to go!’ she cried, clenching her little
fists helplessly. She told him about Cathim, Ousther and Hulipont.

‘Who’s Ousther?’

‘I don’t know. The aunts didn’t tell me.’

Nish frowned. She wasn’t making sense. ‘What aunts? You’d
better start from the beginning – from the pretty little girl who got me
out.’

Maelys looked hurt, as if he’d implied that she were plain,
though she hastily concealed it. She explained, and as the story came out
– the crushing of an ancient clan, the women struggling for survival in
the one room left to them, the aunts who refused to bend to the tyrant,
Fyllis’s unusual talent – the knot in the pit of Nish’s stomach
tightened.

‘I don’t understand what your clan’s downfall has to do with
me.’

On the pinnacle he’d foolishly succumbed to the hope of an
ordinary life beyond his father’s reach. Maelys’s tale shattered that hope.
There was no great conspiracy against Jal-Nish; no powerful enemy preparing to
take him on. Nish remembered the aunts now; Fyllis had mentioned them. He was
trapped in a farce constructed by three mad old women. He bit down on
hysterical laughter.

‘Because you’ve got to become the Deliverer,’ she said, as
if that were obvious.

‘The Deliverer?’ The knot tightened painfully. ‘What’s
that?’

Maelys gave him an odd look. ‘Before you went to prison, you
vowed to return and save the world from your father.’ With eyes shining, she
quoted his ringing declaration back at him, word for word and with exactly the
emphasis he’d used when he’d spoken it after Irisis’s death. It took him right
back to that awful day, the worst of his life, and Nish couldn’t bear it. He screwed
up his eyes, trying to block out the sound of her voice, desperate to escape
the memories.

Maelys stopped abruptly. When Nish opened his eyes she said
simply, ‘All Santhenar has been waiting for this day. Everyone remembers your
promise, and we’ve all been praying that you would escape from prison and save
us from the God-Emperor. You’ve got to become the Deliverer. You’re the only
hope left in the world.’

She was looking at him with such wide-eyed, innocent trust
that he wanted to throw up. His father couldn’t be beaten and it would destroy
him to try; that’s why he’d decided, back in Mazurhize, that there was no
choice but to repudiate his promise. How dare she! He had to put the past
behind him.

‘Then the world has no hope at all,’ he said, despising
himself for the oath-breaker and coward that he was, ‘for I can’t do it.’

NINE

Maelys, watching Nish stumble into the forest, picked
sightlessly at her binding cloth. It had never occurred to her that he would
break his word. What could the matter be? She carefully avoided the thought
that he was a coward, or that the stories about his heroism in the war had been
made up. Who was she, an inexperienced girl whose only knowledge of the world
came from books, to judge such a great man?

He’d been through too much, and must also be suffering from
the brainstorm and the
disruption
.
She should not have pressured him. If they escaped she would nurse him back to
health, and only then remind him of his duty. Yes, that was the best way. He
must become the Deliverer; no one else could. But the doubt had been raised
and, try as she might, Maelys could not quite banish it.

The aunts wouldn’t want her to become pregnant to a coward
and oath-breaker, surely? Or would they? If the God-Emperor took Nish back, the
baby would be his only grandchild and would save Clan Nifferlin. That was the
only thing that mattered to the aunts.

She sank down among the ferns, head in hands. Everything was
so difficult. She had no idea how to bring Nish out of his dismal withdrawal.
She didn’t know much about men, for the men and youths of her clan had all been
killed or driven away when she was still a girl.

For the past two years there had only been her mother, the
aunts and Fyllis, and the aunts never stopped talking about the follies of
their dead husbands, or pointing out the superiority of women in all important
matters. The bitterness helped to mask the pain of all they’d lost, but it
didn’t assist Maelys in understanding what was the matter with Nish. She was so
used to being blamed when things went wrong that she felt sure it was her
fault. She had to discover what really ailed him, then help him to recover. He
had to do his duty and so did she.