You sent it where? said Bloody Herrie.
To the matriarchs, ordering them to make war on Hightspall. The first attack will come tonight and I have no means of calling them back.
Send the caitsthe.
It was a long time before the wrythen spoke. Rixium killed it.
You boasted that no man could kill a caitsthe.
I was wrong.
He also hurt you grievously. With that sword, he’s a formidable foe.
He will die.
What else have you done? said Bloody Herrie, icily.
The host girl got out through the sunstone shaft, outwitted my servant and almost forced him to reveal my identity. I had to burn through his brain, and now she will escape into Hightspall, bearing the master nuclix within her. If the enemy realises -
They will cut the nuclix from her and use it to control the others, including your own, said Ruris.
Their failing magery will be rejuvenated, said the wrythen. It will take on the power of the land itself and tip the balance against us. To the ruin of all.
The matriarchs’ soldiers will find her, said Ruris.
They must not take her, cried the wrythen. If our people find the master nuclix, it will be worse than the enemy getting it.
You said the Pale were sad, cowed creatures, said Bloody Herrie. You said all their magery was gone. How did this girl come to be so strong, so bold?
I don’t know.
What will she do next?
I cannot say …
But you’re afraid.
He did not reply. He wanted to plunge through the floor.
Order the matriarchs to take the girl, but leave her untouched for you, said Rovena.
I have no way to contact them.
Then write another page to the Solaces and transmit it.
I have no alkoyl.
The ghostly ancestors consulted among themselves, then Bloody Herrie said, Can you take command of Rixium?
Not until he’s near the heatstone in his own chambers, said the wrythen.
What about his spell-casting friend, Tobry? You went close to possessing him, did you not?
I … might be able to reach him, though he will be difficult to control.
Do it. Have him find the girl and bring her here.
The master nuclix may not be brought here in a host who has the gift of magery.
A tiny gift, surely. Untutored, unpractised -
Nuclixes call to each other, said the wrythen. The master nuclix might attempt to command the one I hold, and the girl’s magery could be so different to my own that I might not be able to stop it. There is only one safe way. The girl must be taken to the cellar — our healing temple of olden times — and the nuclix cut from her by a Hightspaller under my command. One who lacks even a whisper of magery.
It will not be easy to get her there through a land at war, said Ruris.
You must. If you fail, all fails, said Bloody Herrie.
CHAPTER 31
The sky was visible through Tinyhead’s skull.
A hole the diameter of a thick wire had been burnt through his head from front to back, like a hole burnt through a plank with a red-hot poker. He swayed on his feet, his tongue flap-flopping like a spotted eel. A tendril of smoke drifted from the back of his head and white gloop continued oozing from his right ear, but the greater horror was that he was still alive.
Pain was shrieking through Tali’s temples and her face felt as though it was aflame. Was her enemy trying to attack her the same way? And if he could reach her from his unknown hiding place, was there any point running?
She had to. His power over her was uncertain, but the Cythonians milling in the shaft entrance were an immediate threat. She had to run now. But Tali could not move; her strained thigh muscles had locked in cramp.
Healing charm, healing charm. She massaged the muscles, subvocal-ising the charm, and the cramp eased, though the healing was far more draining than usual and would not last. The white torrent that had killed Banj had drained her to the marrow, and the damage from carrying the sunstone went too deep.
Tinyhead’s arm swung out, his fingers pointed towards the shaft house and one side collapsed on the guards inside. She looked sideways at his eyes. They were empty now, the yellow and the presence gone.
Pulling her orange hat well down, she took his knife and hobbled diagonally up the slope to a sheep-shaped outcrop near the rim of the valley. Crouched behind it, she sawed through the strap binding her wrists and tried to make sense of the images burned into her consciousness.
She’d learned a clue to the killers — Lay, part of a woman’s name — and had been close to discovering her enemy’s name as well, the man Tinyhead called Master. She would have succeeded had not Tinyhead, a Cythonian she had believed to be beneath contempt, called on his master to sacrifice him rather than be forced to reveal the name. And if so contemptible a man could reveal unexpected nobility, what did that say about -
‘Get after the slave,’ Orlyk yelled.
Tali peeped through the longer grass beside her rock as Orlyk and four others rounded the cluster of boulders and stopped, staring at Tinyhead. He was still lurching aimlessly, white clots quivering on his shoulders.
Orlyk doubled over and threw up into the grass. Tali ducked down and worked the charm on her churning belly but the icy sickness did not abate. The Cythonians would also blame her for the attack on Tinyhead. It might make them more cautious but they could not allow her to get away. If they were unable to take her back, their archers would shoot her down.
Orlyk ran up to the steep rim of the basin, looking all around. Tali shrank into the grass. If Orlyk saw Rannilt she would kill her on sight.
Orlyk returned to the boulders and issued orders. Two guards took Tinyhead by the arms, walked him to the broken shaft doors and inside. Orlyk followed. The remaining two guards, who were armed with Living Blades, kept watch. Tali could hear the keening of the thirsty blades.
She wriggled up a shallow fold towards the rim of the bowl, which here rose steep and bare. After making sure the guards weren’t looking her way, she wriggled across several yards of broken rock to the other side and looked out.
As the vastness of the Seethings opened out before her, both ground and sky began to seesaw. Chills ran down her arms and her heartbeat accelerated. She wrenched the hat brim down at front and sides, fighting the irrational dread. But she had to be able to see, had to know where to go.
The bowl was shaped like a crater at the top of a small, round peak, an oasis of green in the middle of a wasteland so barren that it might have been scorched with thermitto. Her mother had warned her of the dangers of the Seethings, and so had Waitie, who had also taught Tali geography. Her overwhelming urge was to scurry down the slope to cover, and hide, though first she must locate Caulderon. Once down into the flatlands of the Seethings it might be impossible to find.
The Seethings were mottled in reds, browns and yellows, littered with gigantic boulders and dotted with thousands of lakes, ponds and sinkholes, all steaming. Directly in front of her, not many miles away, a volcano reared up like a broken horn. Its slopes were brown and grey, as if everything that had once grown there had been swept away under landslides of ash, and grey clouds billowed from its top.