Rebellion

CHAPTER 29

Rix dropped the brush and stared at his dead hand in the yellow candlelight. His heart was thundering. Were his fingers less grey than before? It was hard to tell in this light, though he thought they were.

What was going on?

He flexed his fingers, one by one. This time they moved more easily and he felt a tingling pain in the middle finger. They were definitely pink now, though he could not imagine it would last. It had to be some cruel trick of the magery that had rejoined hand to wrist. But oh, the joy of holding a brush again.

He stirred in more oil until the paint was the right consistency, fretting at the time it was taking and afraid his hand would go dead. He mixed paint on the flat mount of a sundial, took some black on the largest brush and swept it across the wall. Rix eyed it for a minute or two, decided it was a meaningless swirl and rubbed it off with the heel of his hand.

He began again. And again rubbed it off.

Rix clamped his left hand around Maloch’s hilt, in case its protective magery had something to do with his previous painting, and blanked his mind.

Blathy appeared in his inner eye, imperiously naked, daring him to throw her out. Rix groaned and blanked his mind again.

He scrawled on the wall a third time, went to rub out the black marks then stopped with his right hand outstretched. Was that a figure in full flight? Or someone leaping into a pool, arms and legs spread? Or a man roaring in fury? Yes, definitely a man.

But the more he thought about it, the more inspiration was draining out of him. His artistic gift was intuitive and analysis always defeated it. Don’t ask what the man is doing. Don’t try to paint what you’re thinking. Concentrate on something else and let your painter’s hand, your magical, sometimes-live-and-sometimes-dead hand, paint what it sees. Concentrate on striking a blow against Lyf that will shake his confidence and boost Hightspall’s shattered morale.

He was painting unconsciously now, his eyes unfocused, indifferent to what he was doing, totally absorbed by a developing plan.

Rix was a gifted warrior of the rarest sort — not just enormously strong, but fast and dexterous too. And his tutors had been the best in the land. He had never been beaten in a fight and, with the enchanted sword in his hand, even his left hand, he was almost invincible.

Almost, he reminded himself. Pride leads to bad outcomes.

His first action on entering the fortress had been to review its defences, and Rix knew there was no immediate threat. No roving band of villains would dare attack such a well-fortified place while he was in charge.

At some stage the enemy would come after him, though moving troops in winter was difficult and it could take a fortnight to march a sizeable force here. In that time he had to unite the fortress behind him, and the best way to do that was by proving himself against the enemy.

He would lead Leatherhead’s fifty men down the mountain road in darkness and attack the enemy garrison at Jadgery, ten miles away. House Ricinus once held a manor near Jadgery, and Rix had spent several weeks in the area when he was fifteen. He had roamed all over the place and knew the land and the town well.

As he painted, he planned the route of the march and how he would attack the garrison. Were fifty men enough? Ideally, he needed a lot more attackers than there were defenders, but he dared take no more from here; he could not leave Garramide undefended. How could he get more?

The clatter of the falling brush roused him from his reverie. A minute ago his hand had been pink and warm, but it had suddenly gone cold, as if all the blood had withdrawn from it. His fingers were stiff and blue. Was the painting finished? It was hard to tell in this light.

He carried the bracket of candles to the wall. And started. The painting was crude, but it was definitely a man. A dark-skinned man, darker than any Cythonian he had ever seen, almost black. Their skin was pale grey, or occasionally a steely blue-grey, but seldom dark. Though it might darken in the sun, he supposed.

This man was heavily built but not fat — he was massively muscular, yet his arms and legs were thrown out in unnatural angles as though he was doing a dervish dance. No, not a dance. Rix looked closer. The man was in pain — an agony so intense that it had twisted him in ways no normal human could be twisted. He was screaming in agony.

As Rix moved the light, a fleck of paint reflected it back at him in brilliant, shimmering red. Odd, Rix thought. He moved the light the other way. This time the reflection was emerald, and then it was black.

Hair stirred on the top of Rix’s head. What did that remind him of? How could the light be reflected in completely different colours?

Opal could. Where had he seen opal that looked like this? He could not recall; he had emptied his mind too thoroughly. Without thinking, he rubbed the worn wire-bound hilt of his sword, and the image he had drawn blasted into his mind so clearly that he cried out.

He had seen that tormented figure several times before — a man carved from a single enormous mass of black opal — and each time it had been after touching Maloch’s hilt. Tali had seen it too; it had been floating in the white shaft of the Abysm, next to Lyf’s caverns under Precipitous Crag. The Abysm: the most sacred of all the enemy’s holy places, the very conduit between death and life.

Rix also knew who it was, for Lyf had told him and Tali in the cellar before stealing Deroe’s three ebony pearls. The figure wasn’t carved from opal — it was a man turned to opal.

It was the petrified body of the greatest of the Five Heroes, the man who had begun the war with Cythe and founded Hightspall. Rix had been drawn to him from the very first time he had heard the story, and was drawn to him still. Powerful, ruthless, creative and endlessly fascinating, he was a man Rix would have followed anywhere.

The black opal figure was the remains of his ancestor, the first Herovian to step ashore in the land he would take for his own. The man who had brought Maloch to Cythe.

Axil Grandys.

“You should not have painted that.”

Rix whirled. A woman stood in the doorway, one pale arm outflung, pointing to the mural. In the dim light he could not make out her features, only the hook of a mouth, a plough nose and one dark-shadowed, staring eye. And layer upon layer of garments, all odd sizes and unmatched colours. It was the witch-woman, Astatin.

“You should not have painted that.”

“Why not?” said Rix.

“Garramide will fall and all its ancient, secret treasures will be lost.”

Then she was gone, silent on slippered feet.

He rubbed his dead hand and shivered. It was colder than it had ever been; icy. What had changed since he’d painted Grandys? Was the enchantment of the sword involved, and if so, what did it want? Why had it brought him here, anyway?

Why had Maloch involved itself in the rejoining of Rix’s hand? He knew it had; the magery of the sword had made his fingers tingle at the time. Why had the sword given him this gift?

He lowered the sword and walked around the outer wall of the observatory, the tip of the blade scraping along the flagstones behind him. What was the sword’s price? He knew there had to be one — it must have been enchanted for a purpose.

Was it the remnant of an ancient enchantment that had nothing to do with Rix, as the chancellor had said? Maloch was an ancient family heirloom. But who had put the protection on it; and why?

Or had it been placed on the sword by one of Lady Ricinus’s magians, before she gave the sword to Rix? He had no way of finding out. The high magian of the palace had been hung from the front gates of the palace beside his master and mistress.

He had to know more about Maloch, and about the man who had owned it, perhaps even forged and enchanted it. Rix had to find out everything he could about Axil Grandys. If his restored hand was the gift of the sword, he had better find out its price as well. And if he could not pay the price, he should cut his hand off right now and feed it to the dogs.

Assuming they would have it.