Die, she raged, willing his head to burst, his heart to tear open, his eyes to explode from their sockets. Tinyhead stumbled, pressed a hand to the right side of his head, and shook it, then a round, blue stone hanging around his neck glowed and faded. He began to climb the stairs, wincing with each step but clearly unharmed. Tali’s gift had not come. Her last hope had failed.
The killers would go unpunished, but at least she could have the satisfaction of revenge on Tinyhead before she was killed. What if she dragged him over the edge? No, he was far too strong.
Then she had it. ‘Tinyhead!’ she yelled.
The ankle bracelet shuddered violently and Tali knew it was going to chew her foot off, but that did not matter now. She turned and staggered towards the stair rail. Only three steps but it felt like a mile.
High above, a guard bellowed, ‘Stop her!’
Over the pounding in her ears, Tali heard them scrambling down, and she could see other guards running up. She was dead but she was going to take Tinyhead with her.
As she reached for the rail, her knees went. She forced up on will alone, fell forwards and landed against the rail, gasping. Her heart felt as though it was bursting, and the rail was breast-high on her. Could she get the sunstone over it? She had to.
The guards were close. Do it! Taking a firm grip on the rail, Tali went up on tiptoes and bent over it. She was directly above Tinyhead, who had stopped nine flights below her, looking up. She drew her head down out of the way and aimed the sunstone.
‘This is for you, Mama.’
CHAPTER 23
Naked, pants-wetting terror overwhelmed Rix. Magery was the terror he could not overcome, the enemy he could never fight. And the wrythen wasn’t just a creature of magery. It was supernatural, incomprehensible and, since it had no physical body, there was nothing he could do to harm it.
In utter darkness he clung to his sword, which for all he knew was the only real thing left in creation. It was like being in one of the recurring nightmares that woke him screaming and sweating, knowing that the world was ending and it was all his fault because of the terrible thing he’d done, and the service he kept refusing to do …
Pull yourself together. Nightmares aren’t real, and neither are the whispers in your head. That’s why you can never remember them afterwards. Nor is this footless spirit real. It’s just a wrythen, a semi-solid Cythonian shade, and shades can’t touch you. You’re not a coward — you’ve just beaten a caitsthe, for the Gods’ sakes, and no one’s ever done that before. A caitsthe!
It did not help, for this was no ordinary shade. It had brought down the roof with powerful magery the like of which Rix had never seen. Where did it get it from? How could a shade wield such power?
Even in total darkness Rix could sense the fury smoking out of it. Was that because he and Tobry were trespassers, or because they had found those shifter pens down below?
He rotated, boots grating on the gritty floor, and strained until his eyeballs ached. Nothing appeared. The wrythen hadn’t just extinguished itself — it had withdrawn all light from the cavern as it had previously driven the torchlight back into Rix’s burning brand. Presumably, so it could hunt him at its leisure.
It need not have bothered. He truly feared only three things: the bile-dripping tongue of Lady Ricinus, the end-of-the-world nightmares he could never escape when he was home, and uncanny, incomprehensible magery. The wrythen had magery at its command that even Tobry had no understanding of, and Rix feared it the way a bullock feared the slaughterman’s knife.
Devoid of hope, he waited for it to attack. Would he know when it did? In the dark it could come from any direction. It could blast him apart the way it had unpicked the stone in the fissure, or simply stand off and drain him as it had done before, until his muscles died and the creeping cold froze him from the inside out, as the southern ice cap was steadily surrounding Hightspall to crush it out of existence.
‘Light,’ he said softly, hopelessly. ‘Please, let there be light.’
And the faintest emerald glimmer appeared from the rubble. Rix’s heart jumped. ‘Tobe? Is that you?’
There was no answer and the light faded again, but it had to be Tobry, for the wrythen’s light was glacier-coloured. Tobry was alive, and it gave Rix new hope. He had to find a way out. He could not allow his friend to die here and be sucked dry by that fell creature.
Something scraped across the rocks, close by, like the side of a leather boot. ‘Tobe?’
Was the wrythen dragging him away? Rix sheathed his sword and began to crawl across the piled rubble, feeling all around. Another scrape came, this time from his left. He lunged and caught the shank of a wiry, hairy leg. Tobry must be unconscious.
Rix tugged gently. A powerful return jerk nearly pulled the leg out of his hand. He took hold with both hands, prepared to give an almighty heave. No! If the wrythen had Tobry by the head, he might break his neck.
Tobry moaned. His boots thumped a tattoo on the rubble and his left hand blinked several times, as though the uncanny light was being forced back into him. How was the wrythen doing that? Rix squinted into the darkness, which was thickest directly above his friend’s head. It seemed to be forming paired whirlpools over Tobry’s eyes, spinning down as if the wrythen was pulling itself towards his skull.
Or reaching into it. What for? What was it doing to him?
Another blink from Tobry’s hand revealed steam wisping up from his eyes. He convulsed, thudded back on the rubble, and Rix knew that if Tobry wasn’t dead now, he soon would be — or worse than dead. He wrenched out his sword and thrust several feet above Tobry’s head, praying that the ancient enchantments on the blade would turn the black whirlpools aside.
A shock almost tore the sword from his hand, then every muscle in Rix’s arm began to spasm and the weapon flailed about wildly. The wry-then reappeared as a bare outline. Rix caught the hilt in his free hand, controlled it, and lunged at its middle.
But the blade dipped of its own accord and struck much lower. The wrythen lit up from the top of its head to the stumps of its shins and a thin scream issued from its gaping mouth, as if the blade had carved real flesh and smashed live bone. The sword’s tip had passed through its leg at the point of one spectral stump and wisps of its ethereal substance were separating from the wound, dripping silently onto the rubble.
In the eerie light, Tobry’s mouth was opening and closing, his eyes fluttering. An incoherent moan issued from low down in his throat, n-n-n-n. What had it done to him?
Rix drew back and was preparing to strike again when the wrythen withdrew half a yard. Its eyes were huge and staring, its plasm quivering. Could it be afraid of him? Then it spoke in a rusty creak, as though it had not used its true voice for centuries.
‘That — sword. Where …?’
It wasn’t Rix the wrythen feared — it was the sword. But why? Heroes must fight to preserve the race. A notorious quote, Tobry had said. Rix wished he had paid attention to his history tutors, and that he had allowed Tobry to test the blade.
Or did the wrythen fear the enchantment against magery? Rix swiped at it.
The wrythen pointed a finger at his chest. ‘Heart — sunder!’
The pain in his heart was like the flesh being torn in two. A molten ache seared up into his head, accompanied by a sick dizziness that drained the strength from him, and his sword arm went so weak that the sword fell to the rubble. The pain in his heart grew; it was going to burst inside his chest; he was about to die.