Rebellion

CHAPTER 72

“How could he come back from petrifaction?” said Lyf. “It defies the very laws of nature.”

Grandys’ return from the dead, wielding the accursed sword, had almost unmanned him. And he’d lost two ebony pearls, a crippling blow now that magery was failing and weakening more every day.

Lyf wavered through the air, flying low across Lake Fumerous and trailing blood into the water, then across the city to his temple. He had to drag himself inside, for he had left his crutches behind at Glimmering, but he recoiled at the door. The stench in the temple was unbearable.

He dragged himself up through the heavy air to the top of the leaning tower that had formerly belonged to Rixium Ricinus, and clung to the wall, looking out over Caulderon and all he had won. Had all been in vain? Would it be lost just as quickly?

Grandys had crippled him before with that foul sword, and now he was doing it again. Lyf lay on the cold stone, closed his eyes and set to work to heal the wounds in his chest and shoulder.

They would not heal.

The kings of old Cythe had been masters of healing. It had been one of their three primary duties, and Lyf had been one of the most gifted. Even as a bodiless wrythen he had retained an ability to heal, and since he’d had a body back, imperfect though it was, he had healed hundreds of his wounded and ailing subjects.

Now he could not heal himself at all; not the tiniest bruise or graze. Was it because the injuries had been done with Maloch? He did not think so; he had healed other injuries made with that blade. All injuries save for his amputated feet; but they were a special case.

Lyf took to the air again. It was harder than before. With only two pearls, the powerful magery required to move his body through the air was almost beyond him. In his healery he passed down the lines of injured soldiers, laying his hands on one man, then another.

Nothing.

He could not heal anyone. His healing magery, as essential to him as breathing, was gone. Had Maloch done this to him, or was it Grandys’ foul magery? The brute had lusted after king-magery from the moment he stepped ashore from the First Fleet. King-magery was why he had killed Lyf in the first place.

Again Lyf asked himself how Grandys could have come back to life. Then he had an even more chilling thought. What if he brought back the other four Herovians?

He had to act quickly. Lyf returned to his reeking temple, for it contained an ancient portal passage that could carry him instantly to his caverns under Precipitous Crag. Without telling anyone where he was going, he retreated to the flaskoid-shaped cavern, desperate for the security of his aeons-old wrythen home.

And answers.

Once there, he drifted up to the crack — a very different kind of portal — that allowed admittance to the Abysm. He was planning to hurl the other four Heroes down to the bottom and shatter them to a million bits. No one could come back from that.

But he could not gain entrance. The Abysm had been sealed against him. He was locked out of the most sacred place in the land, the place only he had the right to enter in life. This was monstrous.

Was it his punishment for perverting the healing magery; for corrupting what had been so pure and beautiful? Or for hurling his opalised enemies into so holy a place? He had to think so; had to blame himself.

Lyf sank to the floor. Had he been set up from the beginning? Had his enemies allowed him to turn them to opal so they could come back and undo all his achievements? Was it all a gigantic conspiracy, another planned betrayal by the despicable Herovians?

Despair overwhelmed him. After all he had done, to be brought down by an enemy he had thought he’d crushed. He had failed his people, given them a hope that could never be fulfilled.

But worse, far worse was the loss of his healing gift, the very foundation of king-magery. Even if he succeeded in his plan to restore the line of Cythian kings, without king-magery he would not be able to heal the troubled land. His disaster-prone land could not thrive, nor his people survive. They would become degradoes again, sliding towards annihilation.

He had to save them. But first he must take advice from his ancestor gallery.

And this time he would listen.