A hard hand clenched around his calf, fell away, clenched again. ‘Heart-heal,’ croaked Tobry, ‘heart-heal, heart-heal!’ and the bursting pain and icy sickness eased.
‘Heart — sunder!’ repeated the wrythen. This time the finger wavered.
Rix’s heart gave another throb, though the edge of the pain was dull, bearable now. He picked up the sword, feeling so drained that he needed both hands to lift it, and shoved it at the wrythen’s middle. Its plasm recoiled from the blade in all directions, leaving a hole where its belly had been.
‘Upstart, who — are — you?’ it said hoarsely.
He should have kept his mouth shut, used the advantage the sword had given him and hacked the spectre to pieces, but Rix had always been better at fighting than thinking and the insult rankled. He was proud of his House and his ancestors who, in little more than a hundred years, had built Ricinus from nothing to the greatest fortune in the land. Let no man call him upstart. Let no stinking wrythen think that House Ricinus was afraid to speak its name.
‘I am Rix,’ he said. ‘Only child of the noble House Ricinus.’
All motion ceased. The wisps, clumps of nebulosity and enigmatic darknesses of which the wrythen was made hung in the air in a watchful stillness. An alarming stillness. What was it doing? Why wasn’t it speaking?
Rixium Ricinus!
The words weren’t spoken this time, the voice was in his mind again. Why the switch?
‘Do you know me?’ said Rix.
Again that elongated pause. Rix gained the impression that the wrythen was wrestling with a dilemma.
I have not seen you since you were a boy.
The marrow-freezing cold crept upwards and he began to fear that giving the wrythen his name had been a fatal mistake, but he kept his voice steady. ‘I’ve never seen you before.’
No, you haven’t.
Yet the way the wrythen spoke was troublingly familiar.
‘The — sword — is — yours?’ it said aloud.
Rix’s unease swelled. ‘Handed down since forgotten times. In ages past, this sword was the making of our House.’
‘Traitor’s blade,’ cried the wrythen. ‘Liar’s blade. Oathbreaker’s blade.’ ‘It’s a noble weapon,’ Rix cried. ‘I’ve — ’
‘You belong to me. Put down the sword and come.’
‘I … don’t … belong …’ Rix said thickly.
He was bending to lay his sword on the floor when he realised what was happening. How could it have commanded him so easily? How could he have obeyed? He tried to say, ‘Be damned,’ but all that emerged was a grunt.
Rix gathered every ounce of will and managed to say, ‘No,’ though it did not convince him.
‘Yesssss,’ said the wrythen.
Without appearing to move, it had halved the distance between them. Its right hand shot towards Rix’s eyes, shimmying through the air the way it had gone for Tobry. It was trying to get inside Rix’s head, and instinct rose up to defend what his will could not.
He reacted instantly, with the shattering violence and precision that made him such a ferocious warrior. Ducking the hand, he swung his sword out then brought it straight up so it passed up through the wrythen from crotch to chest.
This time he was too quick for it. The enchanted blade parted something too soft to be living flesh yet more solid than any shade, then began to shake so violently that Rix could barely hold it. Tobry jerked as if struck by lightning, let out a thin cry and steam gushed from his mouth, nose and eyes.
The wrythen’s plasm closed around the blade but instantly recoiled, hissing like hot metal quenched in ice. Frost ran along the blade and Rix smiled grimly. The enchantment had done some good after all — no ordinary sword could have touched such a creature.
Both hands shot for Rix’s eyes this time. He jerked the sword out, shook a crust of black ice off it, drew back and swung hard for the region of its heart. The blade went straight through the wrythen, bisecting it, and its halves fluttered in the air for several seconds before it reformed. He swung higher, carving through something more solid, ssssss. A hot shock ran up his arm, his hand went numb and again the sword slipped from his fingers. This time Tobry was directly beneath it.
Rix barely caught the hilt in time, took it in both hands and slashed across the wrythen’s neck, then back. The numbing shocks were not so bad now; he was able to hang onto the blade as the wrythen’s fading segments hissed down the slope of the tunnel, stopped twenty yards away and slowly began to creep together. Had he hurt it? He thought so, for it seemed weaker and was taking much longer to reform than before. But had he done it any serious damage? Unlikely.
‘House — Ricinus,’ it ground out, as though committing the name to memory.
As clearly as if rays of were-light had painted the scene on the wall of the cavern, Rix saw the ice leviathan of his nightmares rolling over the palace walls, crushing them to dust and his people to paste. The cold crept to his throat. What if it wasn’t a nightmare, but a premonition, like past scenes he had painted from his imagination that had come true? Why, why had he come up here? The wrythen had nearly taken control of him, and it gave the impression that it already owned him.
Taking Tobry under the arms, Rix dragged him away, keeping well clear of the fallen caitsthe, though he felt sure it was dead. Further down the tunnel, the segments of the wrythen merged, though it did not come after him. How long until it would? As he heaved Tobry onto his shoulder, his right ankle, which he had managed to ignore during the battle, flared with pain.
He staggered to the entrance, losing sight of the wrythen when he turned the corner, and carried Tobry out past the basin with its perilous water, through the illusion into a leaden gloom, and onto the rubble slope.
‘How the hell are we going to get home?’ he said quietly.
The wind had dropped and snow was falling so thickly that he could barely make out the vine thicket. Leather and Beetle would be in the boulder-strewn clearing on the other side, assuming they had not run off. Or been eaten.
‘How are you feeling?’ said Rix.
No reply. The top of Tobry’s head was bloody, presumably from being struck by a rock, and yellow, oozing blisters were clustered around his eyes, nose and mouth where the wrythen had tried to enter. He had been out for a long time. Too long. After such a blow, sometimes people faded away and not even the healers knew why.
‘You were right about the weather,’ he said, talking for the company. ‘You’re always right and I should have listened.’
He was dragging Tobry through the vine thicket when a jackal let out a barking howl. Tobry’s unconscious body twitched, his eyes shot open, staring straight up, then his blistered eyelids shuddered shut.
Rix gripped his friend’s shoulder. For the cry of a jackal shifter to break through Tobry’s unconsciousness, his terror of them must be monumental. And I led you up here, he thought. I pressured you to stay even when the danger became obvious, and you put your fears to one side because you can never let a friend down.
‘Sorry, Tobe. Some friend I am.’
Every second’s delay was a ticking heartbeat further from survival. Rix crawled along the low passage through the vine thicket, heaving Tobry behind him. If a single jackal shifter attacked in here, they would both die.
There was no sign of the horses when he reached the lower side of the vine thicket, and panic flared. Rix fought it down. One thing at a time. He propped Tobry against a tree and checked him all over. The skull beneath the bloody bruise felt sound, yet his eye sockets were almost black beneath the weeping blisters and his eyelids were hot. What had the wrythen been up to?
Tobry’s pupils were dilated, though at least they were the same size. If it was only a mild concussion, he would recover with no more than a bad headache. But if the concussion was severe, he could die.