The Curse on the Chosen (The Song of the Tears Book 2) (41 page)

The link between flappeter and rider must have failed
momentarily, for it sideslipped directly for Rurr-shyve. She shot down into the
valley, wailing shrilly. Having mated with the giant male, she was bonded to it
as well.

In quick succession, Ketila hurled rocks at the two archers
on the male flappeter as they struggled to get a clear shot. The leading archer
was struck so hard on the hand that it tore the bow from his fingers. He swayed
wildly in the saddle and managed to catch his bow by the string, but before he
could recover, Ketila, her face twisted in a snarl, hit him in the back of the
head with another rock. He slid out of the saddle, swung upside down from one
foot by the stirrup, then fell.

But Rurr-shyve came zooming up from the other side,
appearing out of nowhere, and the rear archer fired at her. The arrow skimmed
her neck, caught in her knotted hair and slammed her backwards into the crevice
so hard that her teeth snapped together. Ketila’s eyes rolled up in her head
and she toppled forwards.

 
THIRTY

At the moment the red fog disappeared from above the
whirlpool and revealed that Vivimord was gone, Nish knew in his heart that he
had made the wrong choice and that Gendrigore’s peaceful existence would soon
be over. He went heavily back to the tents and sorted through Vivimord’s gear.
There wasn’t much – just clothes, which he burned, since not even the meanest
peasant of Gendrigore would have worn them – some potions and ointments
which he threw out, a book written in a script he could not decipher, which he
put away for later, and a sabre with a basketwork handle, which he kept,
because metal weapons were hard to come by in Gendrigore, and of poor quality.

The sabre was beautifully made, of the same black metal as
Vivimord’s wavy blade, and Nish knew he would soon have need of it. It was a
trifle long for him, but he would have to get used to that, for no smith in
Gendrigore had the skill to cut down such a blade without ruining it.

The Maelstrom of Justice and Retribution did not reform, and
the townsfolk expressed some unease about it in the inn that evening, though
after a vigorous and well-lubricated debate they gave the next whirlpool the
same name and got on with their affairs.

In the morning, the sea leviathan that had attacked Vivimord
was discovered, floating upside down and blackly bloated, at the point where
the former whirlpool had been. This was seen as a bad omen, but by the
following afternoon a hundred sharks and ten thousand eels had reduced it to a
skeleton which sank out of sight and, to Gendrigore, the matter was finally
closed.

‘We’re not afraid of the God-Emperor,’ said Barquine, the
mayor, several nights later. He and Nish had taken to sitting on the deck of
the open-air inn with their feet on the rail, watching the mist roll in over
the forest, as it did every afternoon that it wasn’t actually raining. Such
afternoons were rare at any time, for it was always raining in Gendrigore.

Nish took a hearty pull at his beer. Though it had come up
from cellars excavated ten spans into the rock below the inn, it was tepid. It
was good beer, though, strong and dark with a powerful flavour of roasted malt
and a bitter aftertaste from some local herb used in place of hops, which were
unobtainable here.

‘I swear this is the finest beer I’ve tasted in more than
ten years.’ He raised his glass to Barquine.

‘Considering that you spent most of that time in your
father’s dungeon, and the rest on the run, that isn’t much of a compliment,’
said the mayor. ‘But I’ll take it as given, and so will my brew-girl, when I
tell her.’

‘Brew-girl?’ frowned Nish. ‘Brewing beer is a man’s job in
Gendrigore, isn’t it?’

‘Not since Alli took over, and if she hears you say so
there’ll be a warty toad in the bottom of your next mug. I taught her
everything I know about brewing, and she surpassed me within the year.’

‘She can brew my beer until the polar ice melts and floods
the whole world,’ said Nish with a sweeping gesture that slopped beer down the
mayor’s shirt. He hastily returned his tankard to the rail.

Barquine casually wiped his shirt, as though it was an
everyday occurrence. ‘You’re a travelled man, Nish,’ he said, chewing on a
sprig of lime leaves to cover the smell of his drink before he went home. ‘Are
there really polar lands where nothing lives and nothing grows, and even the
sea is covered in ice?’

‘So I’m told. I haven’t been that far south, myself, but my
old friend Xervish Flydd, once a scrutator, flew over such lands in a thapter,
a flying machine, during the war. And I once crossed high over the Great
Mountains, the highest peaks in the world, where there was nothing but snow and
rivers of ice as deep as the sea cliffs of Gendrigore are tall.’

‘That would be a marvel indeed. I’ve seen snow once or
twice; it falls every winter at the top of The Spine that keeps the marauders
of Lauralin out of our land, though it seldom lasts long.’

‘Mayor …’ began Nish after he’d finished his beer and, for
once, had not started on another. Today it was doing nothing to ease his
troubles, for he knew the time had come to act.

‘Barquine, please,’ he said.

‘Barquine, I’m worried about my father. You don’t know what
he’s like.’

‘I’ve a fair idea, Nish, for we hear the tales, even here.
There’s no need to worry about us. Many tyrants and scoundrels have tried to
conquer our land, and all armies, save three, foundered on the way up over The
Spine, the only way into Gendrigore. The path is so high and rugged that no
army can climb it and still fight when it gets to Blisterbone Pass. Of those
three who reached Blisterbone, two armies did not survive the descent.’

‘Isn’t there a second pass? I’m sure I heard someone talking
about it.’

‘There’s Liver-Leech Pass, but it’s even higher and more
dangerous. If an army can’t cross the lower pass they won’t attempt the higher
one. And even if some survivors do cross Blisterbone, and climb all the way
down the path on our side, they’ll be starving and riddled with fevers that
hardly touch us. Your father is a mighty foe, I grant you, but The Spine will
break him too.’

Barquine had been saying much the same for days, and Nish
did not think he would ever face up to the peril. No one in Gendrigore was
concerned about the God-Emperor, and there was no one he could talk to about
his fears, for Tulitine had gone into the forest with her lusty farmhand after
Vivimord’s death, and had not returned.

Nish had also tried to convince the townsfolk to get ready
for war, and they had listened politely, since he was the son of the
God-Emperor and a former hero, but when he called them to arms they went home
to their beds and thought no more about the matter. The God-Emperor lived half
a world away and it was impossible to imagine him interfering in their humble
lives. Nish trekked to the nearby towns and villages, and received the same
response everywhere.

What more could he do? How could he help a land which would
not help itself? Yet he had to do something; he could not stand by.

He offered the young people military training, thinking that
they would flock to him for the chance to learn about the martial arts, for
when Nish had been young, a hero of the wars would have attracted thousands of
youths.

But they did not care to learn the art of war in Gendrigore.
A few dozen young men and women appeared that first evening, though they were
more interested in seeing him in action than in learning themselves, and after
a couple of hours, most had drifted off, never to return. Those who did stay
followed his orders, more or less, but they chafed under his discipline and saw
little sense in the sword, spear and shield exercises he made them repeat a
thousand times until they had them right.

Nish was walking back to his tent in the moonlight
after another fruitless training session when Tulitine appeared from the
forest, not far from where Tildy had been killed. He turned to meet her, but
she bypassed the town, walking so quickly that he had to trot; he caught her at
last after she crossed the sloping green on the way to the path which led down
to the sea cliffs.

It was another sweltering night, and he was dripping with
sweat. She must have heard him running after her, but did not turn around.
Could she be entirely without fear? ‘Tulitine?’

‘Yes, Nish?’ she said, maintaining an unbroken stride.

He felt like a child running after an indifferent adult.
Falling in beside her, he wiped his sweaty face. ‘Where have you been?’

‘Surely you weren’t worried about me?’

‘A little. And … I missed you.’

‘Really?’ she said with a hint of amusement. ‘Are you lonely
in Gendrigore? I’ve always found the people of this land to be excellent
company – especially the ones who creep into your tent in the middle of
the night.’

He ignored that. ‘Have you been here before?’

‘I’ve been
everywhere
before.’

He would ask her about that sometime. ‘They are good
company. I particularly like the mayor …’

‘And sporting in bed with the young women,’ she said
teasingly.

‘Them too,’ he muttered. Since Vivimord’s death he had
seldom spent the night alone, but it was embarrassing having an old woman refer
to such matters. Even more embarrassing that she so openly enjoyed the favours
of men a third her age, but he did not want to dwell on that. ‘It’s just
– they don’t take things seriously.’

She stopped momentarily as they passed into the strip of
forest between the town green and the sea cliffs, sniffing the air, before
striding on. The humidity was even more oppressive here, and the mosquitoes
unrelenting. He waved his arms back and forth but it made no difference. The
moment he stopped, they settled in speckled swarms on his face and hands and
the back of his neck.

‘They are serious about everything that matters,’ she
corrected. ‘Their fishing; their farming and herding and gathering; their
families, their town and their country.’

‘You know what I mean. I’ve tried to warn them about Father,
but they won’t listen.’

‘Why should they?’

‘Because he could destroy this place with a wave of his
hand.’

‘But they know otherwise. In its entire history, Gendrigore
has never been successfully attacked.’

‘The past is an uncertain guide to the future, Tulitine.’

‘Indeed, but the Range of Ruin – the only part of The
Spine that can be crossed – has no paths, and even if you get to
Blisterbone Pass, the way down runs along cliffs so steep that a mountain goat
would have trouble negotiating them. The rain up there is torrential, the
jungle so thick a walker must hack her way through it, and infested with every
kind of biting, stinging, creeping and crawling creature imaginable. The
ground-clinging mists mean that you cannot tell whether your next step will go
down on crumbling rock or over the edge of a precipice, and the fevers can turn
your lungs to mud or your bowels to water within a day.’

‘If anyone can find a way, Father will. He’ll happily lose
two armies if it ensures the third gets through.’

They walked out of the strip of forest into the band of
small trees paralleling the cliffs. The timber tripods of the cliff fishers
stood up like black tent frames in the moonlight.

Tulitine went to the edge and sat on the bare stone with her
legs dangling over. Nish sat a little further back, enjoying the cool breeze on
his face and the relative absence of mosquitoes and gnats. No wonder she spent
so much time here. The booming of the waves against the lower cliffs had a
metronomic regularity that he always found soothing.

Down to his left, a trio of dolphins burst through the
swell, one after another, standing on their tails and waving their heads in the
air, and Nish could sense their delight in their sport. The first dolphin shot
into the newly named Maelstrom of Justice and Retribution, rode the currents
around for several revolutions and then leapt out the other side, chittering to
its fellows.

Nish laughed for the sheer pleasure of seeing their joy.
Tulitine was leaning forwards, chin resting on her knee, listening to their
calls. They circled the whirlpool a few more times, then dived under the swell
together. After they had gone, and Nish was gazing idly at the moonlight
reflecting off the foam, he saw a light below him, moving in the wind. He felt
the sweat break out on him anew – surely it couldn’t be Vivimord, back
from the dead?

‘Tulitine,’ he whispered. ‘A light.’

She chuckled, then lay down on her back on the warm rock,
looking up at the stars. ‘It’s the fisherwomen.’

‘At this time of night?’

‘A good fisher fishes when the fish are feeding. It’s a
lovely night for it. If you look closely you can see a school swimming just
below the surface.’

Nish couldn’t see any fish, but streaks of silver shimmered
up and down as the wet lines moved through the waves. Some minutes later he
noticed a larger flash as a fat tunny was hauled up hand over hand, flapping on
the end of the line. ‘She’s got one.’

The old woman didn’t answer. He could hear her steady
breathing, though he didn’t think she had gone to sleep. ‘Tulitine?’

‘Yes?’ she said quietly.

‘When we were talking earlier, I got the impression that you
were advancing Barquine’s arguments rather than your own.’

‘I might have been.’

‘And I’m wondering if you’re not a little worried, too.’

‘Not for myself.’

Getting anything out of her was like pulling teeth, but Nish
persisted. ‘Yet you’re afraid for Gendrigore. You don’t believe it’s as safe as
they think.’

‘As you said, the past is not an infallible guide to the
future.’