Rebellion

CHAPTER 70

The chancellor was a cunning and devious man, Rix knew. A man well known for sudden reversals of policy. It wasn’t surprising, therefore, that the man who had previously crushed and condemned Rix now treated him as his most important ally. What was he really up to?

Immersed in these worries, he did not take in the gathering storm or notice the acrid smell of ozone. He wasn’t paying attention when the chancellor signed the paper, nor when Lyf suddenly checked over his shoulder. Rix was only roused by the lightning bolt striking the top of the temple and the slowly growing shimmer that he should have recognised instantly.

He had first envisioned it months ago, with his hand on Maloch’s hilt. He had painted it on the wall of the observatory in Garramide. He had ridden all the way to the sinkhole in that lunatic attempt to recover what he had believed to be Grandys’ petrified body. So why did it take so long for him to recognise the man himself? Perhaps he did not want to believe that a petrified man could come back from the dead.

Rix had always been afraid of magery, and now the fear rose in him until it was paralysing. How could a man turned to stone come back to life? Surely the act of petrifaction would destroy every organ in his body. He was rising from his chair, trying to understand, when Grandys caught the movement.

“Who the blazes are you?”

“I’m Rixium Ricinus.”

“Ah,” said Grandys, rubbing his huge, opal-armoured nose. “You crushed the enemy at the siege of Garramide. Come, I need a bold captain.”

As if from a great distance Rix heard Glynnie cry out and he remembered, with a shiver, the night he had been studying the mural upstairs at Garramide. He had been agonising about his own leadership failures and wishing he’d had Grandys’ brilliance as a warrior and a leader. The figure on the wall had seemed to speak to him, Follow me, and at the time Rix had wanted to. But not for anything would he follow this coarse, brutal man.

“No thanks,” said Rix.

“It’s an order, not a request.”

The man’s arrogance was breathtaking and, despite Grandys’ size and presence and overwhelming power, Rix wasn’t taking it.

“Be damned!” he said recklessly. “I’m no one’s man but my own.”

Grandys swelled until his crusted skin creaked. Then his opaline eye fixed on the sheath on Rix’s hip. And the wire-handled sword.

“Maloch is mine!” he roared. “Give it to me.”

Grandys was on the other side of the great conference table but he simply barged through it, knocking everyone aside. His armoured skin shattered the timbers and sent splinters flying in all directions.

Maloch shook wildly, rising halfway out of its sheath as it had at the Abysm. Rix took a firm hold of the hilt, turned towards Grandys, then hesitated. How could he attack his own ancestor, the first of the Five Heroes and the founder of Hightspall? He put up the blade, not knowing what to do, then remembered Swelt’s dying words. Grandys was sterile. He’d had no descendants. It also meant that Rix wasn’t Herovian. It came as a profound relief. Rix whirled and attacked.

“Maloch!” said Grandys. “Obey my command! Strike him down.”

The sword twisted so violently in Rix’s hand that he could not hold it, then struck at his face. He ducked and tried to turn the blade away. It struck again, opening a long gash across his forehead.

Blood flooded into Rix’s eyes, half blinding him. The sword twisted from his hand, arched upwards and, with a roar of triumph, Grandys caught it.

An arm went around Rix’s shoulder, steadying him.

“How did he get free?” said Rix.

“Perhaps he got enough help from Maloch after all.” It was Tobry.

“But how the devil did he know to come here?”

“All Hightspall knows about the peace conference. Wipe your eyes.” Tobry pressed a rag into Rix’s hand. “Grab another sword. I’ll keep him at bay betimes.”

Rix’s head was throbbing. He cleaned the blood out of his eyes and tied the rag around his forehead, across the gash. When he could see again, Tobry was advancing on Grandys, sword in hand. Tobry was a fine swordsman, no doubt of it, but Grandys had been a master. With Maloch and its protective magery, he could kill Tobry with a single blow.

“Tobe, wait.”

Wrenching a sword out of a guard’s hand, Rix leapt after Tobry. They fought side by side for a minute or two, and even kept Grandys at bay, but he was grinning broadly. He was toying with them. He had been a great magian as well as an invincible warrior, and with Maloch in hand his magery was greatly enhanced.

With a single blow from Maloch, Grandys hacked both their blades in two. He focused on Tobry, his eyes narrowing to points as if trying to peer inside him, then his cruel mouth turned down.

“A bag of gold for anyone who cuts out the obscenity’s black livers,” he bellowed. “Take the shifter down.”

“Tobry, look out!” Tali screamed as a dozen of the chancellor’s guards, evidently mesmerised by Grandys’ reappearance, stormed towards Tobry.

“Fly, Tobe,” Rix hissed. “We’ve got to live to fight again.”

Tobry ran ten steps to the edge of the temple, dived out over the low cliff into the water, and disappeared. As he did, Rix saw Holm’s grey head appear over a rock outcrop, then duck down again. Grandys studied Rix for a moment. “I’ll deal with you in a minute.” He turned away.

Lyf was standing on his crutches, staring at his enemy. A malevolent smile crossed Grandys’ opaline face.

“You destroyed Tirnan Twil,” he said quietly. “And my Herovian heritage.”

“I had nothing to do with it,” said Lyf. “The gauntlings went renegade.”

“You created them. For my blood-price, I’ll accept your king-magery.”

Lyf laughed hollowly. “It was lost when you walled me up in the catacombs. When I died, it had nowhere to go.”

“It went somewhere,” said Grandys, “and you know where.”

Lyf paled, then extended his right hand towards Grandys, attacking with ferocious flashes of magery. To Rix, it seemed that Lyf was drawing on all the power of the pearls, attempting to overpower his enemy by sheer force. Rix held his breath. He did not want Lyf to win, yet how could Grandys be any better?

The attack failed, for the force never reached its target. Maloch’s protective magery diverted the flashes towards the rear of the temple, shattering several columns and causing the corner to collapse in a great tumble of blocks and cylinders of limestone.

Grandys folded his arms, smiling contemptuously, then leapt twenty feet across the temple and struck, wounding Lyf in the shoulder, then the chest. Lyf screamed as the accursed blade parted his flesh. Maloch struck again, shattering the little heatstone case and scattering ebony pearls across the marble flagstones. Grandys swooped on the bouncing pearls, caught two and held them up, roaring in triumph.

Lyf let out a shriek of dismay, called the other two pearls to his hand, then dropped his crutches and fled across the sky, trailing blood. His guards and generals, and the three matriarchs, stared after him, unable to comprehend how the reversal could have come about so easily. Neither could Rix. This changed everything.

The wizened, hunchbacked chancellor approached, extending his hand to Grandys. If they joined forces, could they turn the war Hightspall’s way?

“That was well done, Lord Grandys,” said the chancellor, gesturing to his own party. “If you would come this way, we have much to talk about.”

Grandys looked the chancellor up, looked him down, then spat on his black boots. “I have only one policy, and it is war. War until the enemy have been eliminated from the world.”

Turning his back on the apoplectic chancellor, Grandys checked the temple, evidently decided that all threats had been eliminated, then focused on Rix again.

“Since Maloch allowed you to use it, you must be my kinsman.” He touched Rix on the chin with the sword. “Follow me.”

This time Rix felt a compulsion to do so, but he fought it, just as he had fought the compulsion Lyf had put on him as a child, through the heatstone in Rix’s salon in Palace Ricinus.

“Nope,” he said, as insolently as he could manage.

Grandys pointed Maloch at Rix’s heart. “With the magery of this sword, I command you to follow.”

The spell struck Rix like a physical blow, so hard that he almost went over backwards and his knees turned to water. It was all he could do to stay upright, and he could feel the command beating at him, undermining his free will and trying to take control of him.

Few men could have fought such a spell, but Rix had spent the second ten years of his life fighting Lyf’s compulsion, and the struggle had developed an inner strength in him, a resolution that no one not forged in such fires could have had. He drew on every ounce of that strength now, directed it against the command, and broke it.

“Ugh!” grunted Grandys, as if he had taken a painful blow to the midriff. His opaline cheeks flashed red and black. He pointed Maloch again and, groaning with the effort, repeated, “I command you to follow.”

Again Rix tried to fight the spell, but this time it was stronger. Too strong, for he had given his all the previous time and had nothing left.

“Rix?” Glynnie shouted. “He’s ensorcelled you. You’ve got to fight him.”

He wanted to, but Rix could not. It was over. He lurched across on rubbery knees and stood behind Grandys.

“I always win,” said Grandys.

He leered at Tali, who was standing on the red circle holding Rannilt’s hand and looking as dazed as everyone else. “I have great need of a woman,” said Grandys. “You will come to my bed tonight.”

Rix felt his outrage rising like a thunderhead, but he could do nothing about it. Tali wouldn’t be able to resist his magery either. No one could.

Her jaw knotted. The sinews stood out in her neck and she let out a great groan, then cried, “I will not.”

Grandys looked at her in astonishment, as though such a rejection had never happened before. “Who are you?”

“I am Pale,” she said proudly.

He frowned, and Rix gained the impression that Grandys was trying to remember where he had seen her before. Tali was trembling all over.

Then Grandys’ lip curled. “You’re an unworthy slave. The command is revoked. Follow me, Ricinus. We’re riding to war.”

He mounted the largest horse there, ordered Rix to take another, then rode away, leaving a shattered silence behind him.

As Rix followed numbly, he could see the terror in Glynnie’s eyes. It was mirrored in his own, for he was starting to realise what a brute Grandys really was. Rix kept fighting the command spell, but it did not relinquish its hold for an instant.