“You may be right,” said Holm, “but I don’t see — ”
“If the Pale are facing genocide, I have to fulfil my blood oath. I have to rescue them.”
CHAPTER 35
Holm whistled. “Has it occurred to you that you’re taking on the impossible?”
“Every day,” said Tali. “Every hour! But what option do I have?”
“Was your blood oath that specific? Did you actually swear to go back to Cython and rescue them?”
“I’m not going to weasel out of it.” How she wanted to; Tali knew she wasn’t up to the job.
“Answer the question.”
“No, it wasn’t that specific, but it’s what I have to do. So I’m going to need my magery.”
“Ah, yes,” said Holm. “And all the evidence suggests that emanations from heatstone created the ebony pearls — in you and your ancestors.”
“By itself?” said Tali. “Or did Lyf have something to do with it?”
He must have. She could not bear the thought that her family’s agony had a natural cause. Someone had to be at fault. Someone had to pay.
“But once created,” Holm continued as if she had not spoken, “there’s a tension between these emanations and the pearls. That must be why being near heatstone causes you such pain.”
“I don’t see — ”
“I wonder if that tension might be used to unlock the power of your pearl?”
“How?”
“In a nutshell — ha! — by surrounding your head with it.”
“Wouldn’t that be painful?”
“Agonising,” he said cheerfully. “I’m not sure I could bear to watch.”
“Yet you’re suggesting I do it.”
“I suggest nothing. I advise nothing. You asked for my help. I’m telling you what I think. No more.”
“If our positions were reversed, what would you do?”
“Our positions can’t be reversed.”
“Just answer the damn question,” Tali snapped. “What would you do?”
“You’re a prickly little thing, aren’t you?”
“Especially when ugly old coots call me a little thing.”
He sipped, refilled his cup and drained it. “A few things in life are worth the price one pays for them. Magery isn’t one of them.”
She stared at him, mouth open.
“No more questions,” he said.
“Are you going to help me?”
“Are you asking me to, knowing the likely consequences?”
She licked her lips, which were unaccountably dry. “Yes.”
“Then I’ll do it — for my own reasons. Go to bed. You’ve got a long and painful day ahead… assuming you survive.”
“But I might not?” she said hoarsely.
“I’ll do my best. I’d miss your company.”
“But?”
“Death is a possible consequence.”
She woke during the night. Holm had not moved in hours. He was sitting cross-legged on his oilskins, cutting the heatstones to pieces, shaping each piece and testing how it fitted together with its neighbours.
When she roused to see daylight streaming in, he was still leaning back against the ice wall, snoring gently. On the floor before him sat a heatstone helmet made of hundreds of perfectly shaped pieces, each slotted so they locked together like a three-dimensional jigsaw. What a marvellous craftsman he was.
The helmet was ten feet away, yet her head throbbed. How bad would it be with it on her head, surrounding her pearl to force the gift out of it into herself? It would be agonising; it might be unbearable.
There was no point dwelling on it; her oath must be kept. Just get on with it!
She put on the helmet and the pain was so bad that she wanted to scream. But she could not. She couldn’t see, couldn’t hear, couldn’t speak, couldn’t move — then her senses overloaded and the pain vanished -
“I can’t find it anywhere, Errek,” said Lyf. “What if it’s been destroyed?”
He was searching frantically, tearing the stones out of the wall of his temple with his bare hands and breaking his nails as he did.
“Pray it has not,” said the faded wisp that was Errek First-King. “The balance is tilting rapidly now — far more rapidly than it should — and all forms of magery are failing with it. You’ve been profligate, Lyf.”
Lyf hurled the stone aside, checked the space where it had been, then heaved at another. “The enemy are devils. I had to make sure we won the first battles within hours. I had to make them believe we were invincible.”
“Was it worth it? We would have won within days anyway.”
“I hadn’t realised that pearl magery was limited; that the well could be emptied so easily.”
“And now you know,” said Errek. “Don’t waste any more magery on the war. You’ve got to save it for your greatest task — if it’s not done soon, the balance will tilt so far that it’ll be irreversible.”
“Without the key, I can’t even begin.”
Too late for what? thought Tali. What balance? Why irreversible?
“Then get the master pearl,” said Errek. “It’ll lead you to the key.”
The pain flooded back and overwhelmed her again.
Tali wrenched off the helmet. Her head felt as though an axe was buried in it. She rolled over, crawled out to the entrance and vomited down the icy slope.
Holm handed her a cup. She rinsed her mouth with it and allowed the rest to run down her throat, which felt hot and inflamed, as if she had been screaming.
“Better?”
“No!” she croaked. “Why did you let me do such a stupid thing?”
“You only had it on for ten minutes.”
“Ten very bad minutes.”
“Not as bad as they might have been. Did it work?”
“I don’t know; all I remember is pain. But I don’t feel any different.”
“Why don’t you test your magery?”
“Don’t have the strength.”
“Or are you afraid to try in case you fail?”
She didn’t answer.
“Success is built on the failures you learn from. If you’re afraid to fail, you’ll never succeed.”
Tali pointed a trembling finger at him. “I’m getting an urge to blast every grey hair off your leathery old head.”
“I could use a haircut.”
She sat down, abruptly, as the memories flooded back. “I saw something.”
“What?”
She told him. “And it’s not the first time. I also saw Lyf and the same ancient ghost after my first blood-loss reliving. His name was Errek and he was telling Lyf what to do. Who was he?”
“Errek First-King. The very first of the line of Cythonian kings, ten millennia ago. He’s a legend, credited with saving the land and inventing king-magery.”
“Is it true?”
“After all this time, who could tell?”
“Well, Lyf was asking Errek’s advice and taking his orders.”
“It raises many questions,” said Holm. “What balance was Lyf talking about, and why is it tilting so rapidly? What’s changed?”
“And what’s the key he needs so badly? Is it a key to a safe? Or a secret door?”
“When was it lost? Did he say?”
“No; but I first envisaged him searching his temple not long after the chancellor fled Caulderon,” said Tali, thinking it through. “And that’s the first time Lyf had been alone in his temple since the Five Heroes abducted him — ”
“Two thousand years ago. So he’s looking for something hidden — or put away — before then.”
“Which he needs for his greatest task. But what could be more important than winning the war?”
“I don’t know…” Holm got up, went to the entrance and looked out, then came back. “But we have learned a piece of vital intelligence.”
“What’s that?”