Vengeance

CHAPTER 106

On her mother’s body, on Mia’s blood, Tali had sworn unbreakable oaths, and now her fingers were quivering on the pearls. By killing Lyf — if she could — she might end the war, or at least delay it until Hightspall could defend itself, and thousands of people who would otherwise die would live. Was that the one’s true purpose?

And why not do it? Rix longed for death, Rannilt was slipping away and, outside, the shifters would soon take Tobry, if they had not already. A painless end was the greatest kindness she could do her friends.

But if she broke her oaths, saved her friends and let Lyf go, a host of innocent people would pay with their lives. She could see them in her mind’s eye, folk she had encountered on the way into Caulderon last time: a crippled girl hobbling on broken crutches, that wailing baby whose limbs were like sticks, the white-haired ancient staggering under the weight of his ailing wife. All were begging her to save them, all dreading she would condemn them.

The chancellor would sacrifice his allies and not be troubled by it afterwards, and perhaps he would be right to do so, for Lyf would never give in. If she let him live, his armies would crack Caulderon open and he would revenge himself on the whole city. What point saving her friends if they were going to die anyway?

Tali’s fingers clenched. She was about to use the pearls when Lyf looked up and smiled, and she choked. He wanted to see the failure in her eyes. He wanted revenge on her most of all.

Damn him! The reckless fury she had suppressed ever since Mia’s death boiled up and Tali saw another way — a terrible way. He’d always protected the master pearl and, if she could destroy it, it might ruin the other pearls as well. It might even finish him — if she had the courage to do it.

Did she? Tali so wanted to live, but if this was the only way to bring Lyf down she had to make the sacrifice, as Tobry had done outside. Yet her sacrifice would be a dreadful way to die.

If she thought about that, she would never be able to do it. Tali doubled over, as if in pain, then grabbed the alkoyl tube Wil had dropped, jerked the cap off and pressed the tip of its needle against the top of her head.

Bracing herself, she prepared to ram the needle through her skull into the shuddering pearl. The alkoyl would destroy it, then eat through her head the way it had burnt through that poor woman’s leg in Cython. A moan rose in her throat; she could still hear those wrenching screams.

Pain flared around the tip of the needle. It was going to be agony, but it had to be done. As Tali thrust, Lyf extended his arm towards her and the tube was wrenched from her fingers and sent bouncing across the floor. Her pearl shrieked the call so loudly that Tali’s head spun and she fell to her hands and knees.

‘I salute your courage,’ said Lyf. ‘But you should not have hesitated.’

‘She not the one,’ sneered Wil, turning his back on Tali and bowing to Lyf. ‘Lord Scribe, you the one.’

Lyf set Deroe’s implements up at the end of the black bench. The top of Tali’s head was throbbing as if the reamer was already grinding through her skull and her bones felt as soft as marrow. She tried to get up but her legs would not support her weight. She had lost.

Lyf was making his preparations when Rix moved so fast that, once again, she lost sight of him. One second he was slumped against the wall, the next his sword had cut through the three heartstrings and the blade was outstretched towards Lyf.

‘Don’t try it,’ Rix said coldly. ‘Once cut with this blade, they can’t be remade.’

He lunged, the titane sword slid between Lyf’s arms and its tip cut him across the chest. Lyf bit down on a gasp as the red ribbons streamed down his front.

‘Having a body means you can die,’ said Rix.

Lyf made an involuntary gesture towards him, but froze it halfway. Tali saw fear in his eyes, quickly hidden.

‘Ah, but when I take your head with the Oathbreaker’s blade,’ said Lyf, ‘it breaks the enchantment forever.’

‘My head is already promised,’ said Rix, with the smile of a man walking gladly to his end, ‘but not to you.’

Lyf pointed the reamer and Tali saw a curse quivering on his lips, but another blow tore it from his hand. Rix took a step forwards and Lyf backed away, hobbling on his remade feet. Rix was forcing him past the stair towards the piles of barrels. Soon Lyf would have to fight. Could this be the end? Tali could not believe that he could be beaten this easily.

‘This the wrong ending,’ said Wil in a nasal whine, and rubbed the brown nodules in his eye sockets until they bled. ‘Lord Scribe has to finish the story.’

As Rix passed the corkscrew stair, a huge figure leapt off it. Tinyhead had crept down, unseen, and all his weight landed on Rix’s shoulders, driving him to the floor and knocking the sword from his hand.

Tinyhead drove his knees into Rix’s back, pressing him down and punching him repeatedly in the head until Rix went still. Tinyhead sprang for the sword and came up with it in his fist.

Tali pulled herself up with the aid of a crate. Rix staggered to his feet, swayed and had to support himself on the stair. Tinyhead struck at him, missing by inches. If he killed Rix with his own sword it would surely break its enchantment and its power over Lyf, because Rix was the last of his line.

‘This too easy,’ wailed Wil. ‘Scribe’s great story can’t end easy.’

Tinyhead glanced at the quivering little figure, shaking his head contemptuously. He took another step, then another. Rix lurched backwards, trying to protect himself with his bare hands.

Tinyhead was about to cut him down when Wil sprang. He landed on Tinyhead’s back, locked spindly legs around his waist and those unnaturally large hands closed around Tinyhead’s throat. Tinyhead dropped the sword and tried to prise the fingers away but Wil’s grip was too strong. He seemed bent on crushing Tinyhead’s windpipe.

Tinyhead threw himself backwards, trying to dislodge the little man. Wil swung around Tinyhead’s waist, landed on top of him and, as Tinyhead kicked and flailed, slammed his head against the floor. Tinyhead’s eyes glazed. He slumped, dazed from the impact and, as Tali watched in horror, Wil calmly strangled him.

Wil rose, breathing heavily through his bloody nose cavity. ‘Contest is even now.’ He put one foot under the sword and flicked it away from Rix.

Tali remembered Lyf’s weakness and saw her opportunity in the same instant. Could he, who had never gone through the proper death rituals, still be linked to his bones? The bones he had protected so carefully?

Lyf must have come to the same realisation, for suddenly he was diving for the sword.

‘Yes, yes!’ cried Wil, dancing a jig. ‘This how it supposed to end, Scribe against the one. Kill her, Lord. Kill her now.’

Tali beat Lyf to the sword and swung it around so fast that it whistled through the air. Lyf flinched and swayed aside.

‘I am the one,’ she cried, and let fly, but not at him.

Tali hurled it at the trophy case, which shattered. The titane sword speared through, struck the skeletal feet which it had severed from Lyf two thousand years ago, and a conflagration of magery flared so bright and fierce that it burnt the bones to ash.

Lyf shrieked. His nodular extremities, constructed at such cost from the dark bones of the facinore, were charring away, belching smoke that began to fill the room like black fog. His severed shins spurt boiling blood, then he vanished.

Wil stumbled away, sobbing, ‘Scribe beaten, theone prevails. Solaces wrong! Scribe’s stories just made up!’

He stopped, sniffed the air, then his face lit as though there were little lamps in his eye cavities and he scuttled up the stairs out of sight.

‘We did it,’ said Tali, clinging to Rix. She could barely stand up.

‘Lyf’s not dead,’ said Rix.

‘But we hurt him badly. We drove him off.’

She knelt beside Rannilt, whose breathing was stronger now. Tears stung Tali’s eyes. ‘I think she’s getting better.’

Rix was staring at the stone door. All was silent outside.

‘Tobe?’ said Rix, retrieving his sword. The tip was melted. He forced the door open. ‘Tobe?’

A shiver made its way up Tali’s back. He must be dead, and it hurt more than Mia’s death. More than anyone’s. She wanted to scream out her pain and loss.

In the passage, hacked jackal shifters were piled in heaps five bodies high; there must have been a hundred of them. Blood slimed the floor for thirty feet, save for an oval space where a charred mess was surrounded by a silvery, metallic halo of condensed lead.

Tali cried out. No man could have survived such carnage. But he must have. Tobry could not be dead. She would not accept it.

His sword lay near the door, covered in blood and bits of brown and red fur.

‘Where is he?’ said Tali, heaving the small corpses aside with her bare hands. She had to see him. ‘Rix, where’s Tobry?’

His kilt lay on the floor, torn to shreds. His boots looked as though his feet had burst out of them. Pain spiked her belly, unbearable pain. ‘Tobry!’ she wailed.

Rix steadied her. ‘He was dying. He took this way for you. If he hadn’t, you could never have beaten Lyf.’

‘What are you talking about?’ she said frantically. ‘What way? What has he done?’

‘It’s for the best,’ said Rix. ‘No human man ever fought against such impossible odds and won.’

‘No!’ cried Tali. ‘No, no, no!’

One of the heaps moved. The jackal corpses were pushed aside and a creature the like of which she had never seen before lurched to its feet. It was almost as tall as Rix, though more like a cat standing on its hind legs than a man. Its short fur dripped with gore, splattered brains oozed down its front and several canine teeth were stuck there.

The creature was bleeding from a dozen wounds, and she was backing away when she saw something familiar in its grey eyes. A gentleness that did not fit the beast before her.

‘Tobry?’ she whispered.

With wild shrieks and savage cries, the cat-creature began to shrink and change from cat to man. The fur withdrew into the skin, the muck fell away and Tobry stood there, naked but for the belt of his kilt.

His burns were gone, healed in the transformation. So were the many scars and bruises he’d had before, apart from the injuries he’d taken as a caitsthe. Tobry was wounded in all the same places as the cat had been, though the bleeding had stopped and the smaller gashes were starting to scab over. It wasn’t quite the old Tobry, though. His ears were slightly pointed, his cheeks were furred and the silvery grey of his eyes now had a hint of green and gold.

‘Tobry!’ She threw herself at him and wrapped her arms around him, joy and horror intermingled. Lyf gone, Tobry alive — it was too much to take in.

He fell, carrying her down with him. He was too weak to stand up. She lifted his head. ‘What’s happened to you?’

‘The damn fool ate part of a caitsthe’s liver,’ Rix said harshly, helping Tobry into the cellar and closing the stone door, ‘and now he’s become a shifter-cat, as if he’d been bitten by the beast. And therefore, he’s condemned.’

Tali swallowed. ‘Tobry? Tell me it’s not true.’

He looked into her eyes and, momentarily, he was the same wonderful man who had taken her to the ball and whirled her about like all the other couples, though she had not danced a step in her life.

‘It’s true,’ he said in a voice from which all laughter was gone, all hope.

‘Why? Why?’

‘Had I not, Rix and the children and I would be dead, and the jackal men would be holding you down for Lyf to gouge out the pearl.’

She crushed him to her, ignoring the gore smeared across his chest. ‘You’re such a fool. Such a brave, stupid fool.’

‘Don’t say it.’ He tried to push her away but she clung tighter. ‘Let me go. I’m a monster and I have to be put down.’

Tali jerked free. ‘Rix, tell him that’s nonsense.’

‘It’s the law,’ said Tobry, ‘and rightly so, as I know better than anyone.’ He looked around. ‘What happened here?’

‘Deroe’s dead,’ said Tali, ‘and Lyf’s gone. We hurt him badly.’

‘Not badly enough!’ said Rix.

‘What do you mean?’

‘The three pearls are gone. Lyf must have taken them with him.’