Tali beat Lyf to the sword and swung it around so fast that it whistled through the air. Lyf flinched and swayed aside.
‘I am the one,’ she cried, and let fly, but not at him.
Tali hurled it at the trophy case, which shattered. The titane sword speared through, struck the skeletal feet which it had severed from Lyf two thousand years ago, and a conflagration of magery flared so bright and fierce that it burnt the bones to ash.
Lyf shrieked. His nodular extremities, constructed at such cost from the dark bones of the facinore, were charring away, belching smoke that began to fill the room like black fog. His severed shins spurt boiling blood, then he vanished.
Wil stumbled away, sobbing, ‘Scribe beaten, theone prevails. Solaces wrong! Scribe’s stories just made up!’
He stopped, sniffed the air, then his face lit as though there were little lamps in his eye cavities and he scuttled up the stairs out of sight.
‘We did it,’ said Tali, clinging to Rix. She could barely stand up.
‘Lyf’s not dead,’ said Rix.
‘But we hurt him badly. We drove him off.’
She knelt beside Rannilt, whose breathing was stronger now. Tears stung Tali’s eyes. ‘I think she’s getting better.’
Rix was staring at the stone door. All was silent outside.
‘Tobe?’ said Rix, retrieving his sword. The tip was melted. He forced the door open. ‘Tobe?’
A shiver made its way up Tali’s back. He must be dead, and it hurt more than Mia’s death. More than anyone’s. She wanted to scream out her pain and loss.
In the passage, hacked jackal shifters were piled in heaps five bodies high; there must have been a hundred of them. Blood slimed the floor for thirty feet, save for an oval space where a charred mess was surrounded by a silvery, metallic halo of condensed lead.
Tali cried out. No man could have survived such carnage. But he must have. Tobry could not be dead. She would not accept it.
His sword lay near the door, covered in blood and bits of brown and red fur.
‘Where is he?’ said Tali, heaving the small corpses aside with her bare hands. She had to see him. ‘Rix, where’s Tobry?’
His kilt lay on the floor, torn to shreds. His boots looked as though his feet had burst out of them. Pain spiked her belly, unbearable pain. ‘Tobry!’ she wailed.
Rix steadied her. ‘He was dying. He took this way for you. If he hadn’t, you could never have beaten Lyf.’
‘What are you talking about?’ she said frantically. ‘What way? What has he done?’
‘It’s for the best,’ said Rix. ‘No human man ever fought against such impossible odds and won.’
‘No!’ cried Tali. ‘No, no, no!’
One of the heaps moved. The jackal corpses were pushed aside and a creature the like of which she had never seen before lurched to its feet. It was almost as tall as Rix, though more like a cat standing on its hind legs than a man. Its short fur dripped with gore, splattered brains oozed down its front and several canine teeth were stuck there.
The creature was bleeding from a dozen wounds, and she was backing away when she saw something familiar in its grey eyes. A gentleness that did not fit the beast before her.
‘Tobry?’ she whispered.
With wild shrieks and savage cries, the cat-creature began to shrink and change from cat to man. The fur withdrew into the skin, the muck fell away and Tobry stood there, naked but for the belt of his kilt.
His burns were gone, healed in the transformation. So were the many scars and bruises he’d had before, apart from the injuries he’d taken as a caitsthe. Tobry was wounded in all the same places as the cat had been, though the bleeding had stopped and the smaller gashes were starting to scab over. It wasn’t quite the old Tobry, though. His ears were slightly pointed, his cheeks were furred and the silvery grey of his eyes now had a hint of green and gold.
‘Tobry!’ She threw herself at him and wrapped her arms around him, joy and horror intermingled. Lyf gone, Tobry alive — it was too much to take in.
He fell, carrying her down with him. He was too weak to stand up. She lifted his head. ‘What’s happened to you?’
‘The damn fool ate part of a caitsthe’s liver,’ Rix said harshly, helping Tobry into the cellar and closing the stone door, ‘and now he’s become a shifter-cat, as if he’d been bitten by the beast. And therefore, he’s condemned.’
Tali swallowed. ‘Tobry? Tell me it’s not true.’
He looked into her eyes and, momentarily, he was the same wonderful man who had taken her to the ball and whirled her about like all the other couples, though she had not danced a step in her life.
‘It’s true,’ he said in a voice from which all laughter was gone, all hope.
‘Why? Why?’
‘Had I not, Rix and the children and I would be dead, and the jackal men would be holding you down for Lyf to gouge out the pearl.’
She crushed him to her, ignoring the gore smeared across his chest. ‘You’re such a fool. Such a brave, stupid fool.’
‘Don’t say it.’ He tried to push her away but she clung tighter. ‘Let me go. I’m a monster and I have to be put down.’
Tali jerked free. ‘Rix, tell him that’s nonsense.’
‘It’s the law,’ said Tobry, ‘and rightly so, as I know better than anyone.’ He looked around. ‘What happened here?’
‘Deroe’s dead,’ said Tali, ‘and Lyf’s gone. We hurt him badly.’
‘Not badly enough!’ said Rix.
‘What do you mean?’
‘The three pearls are gone. Lyf must have taken them with him.’
CHAPTER 107
‘We’ve got to have a fire, Rix, or Rannilt will die.’
A freezing wind spat ice crystals in Tali’s face. They had gathered at the top of Rix’s cracked tower to see the end. Since Lyf had four pearls now and she could not use the master pearl within her, the end would not be long in coming.
Rannilt lay still, cocooned in blankets. Tali had on all the clothes she possessed, and one of Rix’s cloaks, yet she was shuddering convulsively. It was six-thirty in the morning and just starting to get light. In the distance, all three Vomits were erupting again, an unequivocal portent of the fall of a nation.
‘Caulderon is finished,’ Rix said harshly.
He looked down at the child and his face softened. He limped down the stairs, shortly to reappear lugging his easels.
Rix smashed them to kindling and lit a fire in a corner of the wall. Tali winced with every symbolic splinter he fed to the flames.
‘Burning your bridges?’ said Tobry, who was slumped on a bench in an exhaustion so total that she wondered if he would ever move again.
Tali laid Rannilt on a bench beside the fire. The child was no better after all, but no worse, either. The wind howled in between the columns, whirling smoke in their faces. This defeat is due to my failures, she thought. I didn’t protect Rannilt and I couldn’t help Rix when he most needed it. Then I lied to Tobry and he lost hope. But my biggest failure was with Lyf. I should not have hesitated.
In the background, another failure nagged at her. Something that might have made the difference if only she could have thought of it, but she could not dredge the memory up.
Glynnie and Benn carried up a forequarter of deer from the palace stores. Glynnie cut it up and they threaded chunks of red meat on skewers and set them over the fire. Juices dripped and sizzled on the coals. Tali stared at the feast, her mouth flooding. The only meat slaves were given in Cython was poulter, and that was only once a year.
‘What’s going to happen now?’ she said.
Rix stared over the wall, his jaw clenched. ‘I should have jumped the other night.’
‘What’s that?’ quavered Benn, who was standing on a bench looking towards the gates of Caulderon.
A lean, footless outline had appeared above the gates, a mid-air manifestation hundreds of feet high.