Holm sprang down, stuffing something into his coat.
“What’s that?” said Tali.
“There isn’t time to talk about it.”
“You’re a fine one to lecture me,” cried Tali, fear choking her. “Go down!”
He rattled down the ladder and she followed. When they reached the bottom, the fire was only three levels above. A blistering wind was driven down past them, and on it she could smell burning hair and other unpleasant things. There was no smoke down here, but it was a struggle to breathe nonetheless; the air did not seem to be giving her what she needed.
She looked around frantically. “Which way did we come in?” she said, panting.
“That way.” He indicated a closed door. He was breathing heavily too. “But it’s not the way we’re going out.”
“Why not?”
“Do you have to argue every bloody point? Do what I say for once.”
He limped to the great door on the other side. It was locked. Whoomph!
“Open it,” said Holm, and stepped aside.
“How?”
“Use your damned magery. As much raw power as you’ve got. No subtlety is required.”
She extended her hand, drew from the pearl and, with a stone-rending boom, the door tore off its hinges and was blasted outwards. It went tumbling across the ravine, to crash into the yellow cliff a hundred yards away.
“Perhaps a hint of subtlety,” smiled Holm.
A cold wind rushed in and up the ladder. The fires above glowed red, then blue.
Suddenly there was flame all around, consuming the air, making it impossible to breathe. Holm caught Tali’s hand, dragging her outside. It was raining heavily and the air was thick with smoke. The arch stretched before them, across to a ledge. They ran, but were only halfway across when, with a Whoomph! Whoomph! Whoomph! fire burst out the door, straight at them.
Tali felt the tips of her hair shrivelling, the fur on the collar of her coat singeing. There came a blast of heat on her exposed skin, then she was pounding away, hauling Holm behind her.
She skidded off the end of the arch, holding her hands out to prevent herself from crashing into the cut-away cliff, then ducked below the level of the arch. Flames roared overhead for a minute or two, bouncing off the cliff in all directions. She was sweltering in her heavy clothes. She sucked at the hot air but still felt suffocated.
Then it was gone into nothing. It might never have been there, save that the yellow cliff was steaming and the moss in the cracks had been charred away. Tali stood up unsteadily and looked back.
Orange flames were visible through the windows of Tirnan Twil, all the way up. Some of the thick panes had burst and flames were licking out, along with yellow, black and brown smoke. The golden stone around the broken windows was already smirched by tarry smoke stains.
Smoke whirled about the spike; rain hissed off the hot stone. The whole structure seemed to shiver slightly, then settle, and for a long moment Tali thought it was going to collapse into the abyss, but it held.
“I almost wish it had fallen,” she said quietly. “Apart from the smoke stains, it looks unharmed.”
“Just as it ever was,” said Holm.
“And even the smoke stains will wash away in time.”
“I know what you mean. It doesn’t seem right that all those people, and everything they looked after so carefully for so long, should have been destroyed…”
“Yet the vainglorious shell remains, untouched. Why didn’t they run?” said Tali. Her insides were aching, burning.
“I think some, like Rezire, had invested so much of their lives in Tirnan Twil that they couldn’t bear to leave, even in its death agony. Like a captain going down with his ship, perhaps.”
“What about the others?”
“It had stood for two millennia, unchanged, untouched. Perhaps the idea of it being destroyed was so preposterous that they could not take it in. Life in Tirnan Twil was slow, contemplative, deliberate.”
“I tried to warn them.”
“You did everything you could. And at the end, the fire came very fast. Much faster than I expected. By the time they realised how bad it was, it would have been on them.”
“It must be a terrible thing, being burned to death.” She shuddered violently.
“I think most would have suffocated,” he said gently.
“Why do you say that?”
“Remember how hard it was to breathe at the bottom? The burnt air sinks. I doubt they suffered much.”
“But still…”
“Not the way I would choose to go.”
He put an arm around her shoulders. She looked back at Tirnan Twil, one last time.
“As they said, a monument to eternity.”
CHAPTER 51
“Was blowing the door off a great destruction?” said Tali.
The smoke was thickening, whirling and tumbling in the updrafts created by the ravine. She could hardly see Tirnan Twil now.
“Did it kill anyone, or destroy something vast or vital?”
“No.”
“Then the answer is no.” He looked down the ravine, then up. “Can you hear them?”
“The people inside?” she whispered, shivering.
“No, the gauntlings.”
It was hard to tell over the roar and crackle of the fire, the wind whistling along the gorge, and the pattering rain.
Kaark! Kaark!
“They’ll come after us, won’t they?”
“Once the smoke clears, they’ll come down to check. With the gusting winds around here, it’d be too dangerous right now.” He glanced at the sky. “Not much daylight left, which is good. Though it means…” He gave her a sympathetic smile.
“What now?” she groaned.
“We’ll have to walk the cliff path out — the really dangerous one — in darkness.”
“What do you mean the really dangerous one? How could it be worse than the one we came in on?”
“It’s worse.” He was smirking.
Tali could not smile. The destruction of Tirnan Twil had burned all humour out of her.
“However I do know a secret way out,” said Holm. “If we can get out of sight we can lose them in the night.”
“Luck isn’t something we’ve had much of, lately.”
“We’re alive, free, and in improving health. I count that as good luck.”
“Just as a matter of interest,” she said as they trudged along, “where are we going?”
“I thought you’d decided that when I was injured and out of it.”
“I was heading in the direction of a place called Garramide. Though I don’t know where it is.”
“It’s a few days east of here, in the middle of the Nandeloch Mountains.”
“Good. I’ve had enough of travel,” said Tali. “About the portrait?”
“What portrait?”
“The one you stuffed in your pocket up on the seventh level. I assume it’s Lyf’s self-portrait. Why did you take it?”
“I suppose, like you, I saw something in it.”
“Do you think it’s the key?”
“Probably not, but self-portraits are always revealing. If it’s cleaned up it could tell us something useful about him.”
That night a wicked blizzard blew in and the few days turned into five, the first two of which they spent in a cave, waiting for the weather to improve.
“Go carefully,” said Holm, on the fifth afternoon. “These are suspicious times, and isolated fortresses are more likely to shoot strangers than welcome them.”
They had spent most of the day labouring up the escarpment through dense forest and heavy snow. They were now standing under the eaves of the forest, studying Fortress Garramide from a quarter of a mile away.
“Better make sure we can’t be mistaken for the enemy, then,” said Tali.
“Take your hat off. There’s never been a Cythonian with golden hair in the history of the world.”
From beneath her broad hat brim, Tali looked nervously at the sky. It was heavily overcast and light snow was drifting before a keen southerly.