Tali tried to pull away but her arm continued its inexorable sweep. With a hypersonic screech the whiteness swept across the Living Blade, shattering the annulus of transparent metal and spraying splinters into Banj’s face, throat and chest. Blood sprang from a dozen wounds, then to Tali’s horror her white-light needles carved across his throat, peeling the skin back before tearing all the way through, cutting off his hoarse scream and sandblasting the wall with fragments of bone.
Banj’s body toppled backwards, slid down a dozen steps and came to rest, his blood flooding down to pool on the landing below. His handsome head bounced down the stairs, following the curve of the ten-sided shaft, and thudded bloodily into Orlyk’s thick shins.
Her toad mouth was sagging, her eyes black and white buttons in her grey face. Her arm twitched involuntarily and the death-lash went flying across the shaft, exploding so violently that it carved an s-shaped groove in the stone. She backed towards the doorway, along with the rest of the enemy, then bolted.
The white needles vanished. The colours in Tali’s head were gone, the pressure too. Her knees gave, she fell against the wall and her head began to throb. Her fingertips were speckled with blood as if by a hundred pin-pricks — the only sign of the magery that had torn out of her. But the rise of her gift gave her no joy. She felt sick at the thought of what it had done.
‘How did that happen?’ she said dazedly, turning away from the shambles and crouching before Rannilt to block her view. ‘What were those white needles?’
Had she seen? Tali hoped not. She shook the child, gently.
Rannilt sat up and her eyes sprang open. The golden light was gone. She looked her normal self again. ‘You’re all bloody. Tali, you all right?’
Tali wiped her face on her sleeve. ‘What have I done?’
‘Saw it in my mind’s eye,’ Rannilt whispered. ‘You saved me. With magery.’
She said it as though it was the most wonderful thing in the world. Had she no memory of her golden display? Had she not seen what Tali had done? Perhaps it was for the best.
‘Run! Get reinforcements,’ Orlyk bellowed from below.
A grey face appeared in the doorway, looking up, then ducked out of sight. Tali clung to the rail. Her head had never hurt this badly before. She could barely see.
‘Tali, come,’ whispered Rannilt.
‘Can’t — move.’ Tali felt faint, and cold, and so weak she could barely hold her head up.
Rannilt took her hand, hauled her to her feet and put a skinny arm around her waist. ‘I’m lookin’ after you. I’ll never leave you, never.’
Tali submitted to her, confused and shivering and unable to speak. She kept seeing Banj’s head flying off, then Mia’s, then Banj’s again. And blood. So much blood. When she’d used magery before, it had never been like that. It had never been visible; it had never killed before. Where had that tearing white hail come from?
Something had jumped from Rannilt to her. Had the golden force flowing from the girl kindled that deadly fire in Tali? The light-storm had burst out as if she were just a conduit for a greater force.
The top landing was covered in pulverised rock and there was no sign of the other guards, save for one whose remains were fused to the right-hand wall beside a hat rack, like a blackened bas relief. The rays from the sunstone implosion had turned him to char, though the stone around him and the hats on the rack were unmarked.
Rannilt put her skinny fingers over Tali’s eyes, as if to protect her. They reached the exit, a square arch of stone whose pair of carved stone doors stood open.
‘Careful.’ Tali clung to the door for a moment, for her legs felt as though the bones had been removed. ‘Guards out there.’
Rannilt slipped out, but soon returned. ‘They’re lyin’ on the ground with their eyes closed.’
Unconscious like the ones at the loading station, Tali prayed. Why had the blast knocked them down yet left her and the other Pale unharmed? It was an important question for later — if they escaped.
‘It’s beautiful outside, Tali,’ said Rannilt, eyes wide. ‘Oh, come see!’
Tali roused. All her life she had dreamed of Hightspall and now it was only a few steps away. She rubbed her eyes, longing for it, then the girl took her hand and led her out into a world she had never seen, into the glorious sunlight of an autumn morning, to her beloved country at last.
Though it was not long after sunrise, the daylight was so bright that her eyes flooded with tears. Tears for the homeland she had never seen, and the mother and father who had sacrificed their lives to try and find it. She wiped her face and was looking around when her head spun and she had to grab Rannilt’s shoulder.
‘What’s the matter?’ said the girl, gazing in open-mouthed wonder. ‘Tali, look at all the flowers. I can see a hundred kinds.’
‘It’s — too big,’ said Tali. ‘I–I didn’t realise it would go so far, in every direction.’
In Cython, no chamber or passage extended more than a few hundred yards without a bend or barrier. All her life she had been used to tunnel vision, to having walls on either side and a roof close above her head. Now she was surrounded by a vast emptiness and the dome of the sky was rocking. It felt as though it was going to overturn on her head.
Her heart raced and she felt a peculiar tingling in her fingers. It was hard to breathe; she swayed on her feet; suddenly she felt cold, ill, dizzy.
Rannilt caught her by the arm. ‘You’re shakin’ all over. What’s the matter?’
Tali’s mouth was so dry she could barely speak. She turned her head and the sky seemed to detach from the earth. Instinctively she covered her face with her arms.
‘Be all right in a minute,’ she croaked. ‘Hat, hat!’
But the tingling and dizziness were getting worse, and she had never felt this way before. What was wrong? She wanted to scream and run but could not move. A wave of dread passed over her; she needed to huddle in a hole, covering her head, blocking out the world she had so longed for and which now felt utterly alien.
Rannilt came back, wearing a bright orange, broad-brimmed hat and carrying another. She gave the hat to Tali, then gasped and backed away, a hand over her mouth.
A huge Cythonian rose from behind one of the defensive walls, and he was so covered in blood and burns and weeping blisters that for a second she did not recognise him. He had a remarkably small, bulging head, all blackened save for the streaming eyes, and his charred clothes were falling to pieces. A small, egg-shaped blue stone, the one that had lit up as she dropped the sunstone, hung around his neck. How had Tinyhead survived? Why wasn’t he unconscious like all the other Cythonians?
‘Tali, run!’ yelled Rannilt.
But even when Tinyhead came stalking towards her, she could not move. The tingling ran up her arms, down her legs to her toes, and her heart was beating so wildly it must soon burst. The sky began to rock violently and she felt sure it was going to overturn. Was she dying? Going mad?
Tinyhead caught her arms, wound a leather belt three times around her wrists and jerked it tight.
‘Oh, Master,’ he slurred through red-raw lips. ‘Master, I have her at last.’
He looked around for Rannilt but the child had vanished.
‘Mimoy, help,’ said Tali in a whispery croak.
‘There is no help.’ Tinyhead heaved her out through the defensive walls surrounding the shaft.
The old woman lay sprawled over a low stone barricade, blood running from her mouth. More blood than Tali would have imagined Mimoy’s tiny body could hold.
CHAPTER 28
Tobry’s blistered eyes, now thickly coated in bile-green unguent, made him look like a corpse risen from the dead, yet he was unnaturally cheerful. He still wasn’t meeting Rix’s eyes, though. He seemed to be acting himself, trying to appear normal though clearly he was not.