Tali didn’t ask how the child knew. Rannilt’s gift was quite unfathomable. “He must be an ally of the chancellor’s, then. I knew he had something up his sleeve.”
“Should I let him through?” said Rannilt.
“You can do that?”
“I think so.”
There wasn’t time to weigh the pros and cons, and without knowing the chancellor’s plan Tali had no way of doing so. “Yes, let him through, whoever he is.”
Rannilt opened her closed right fist and a stream of tiny golden bubbles streaked out towards the centre of the approaching storm cloud.
Instantly it went dark, then lightning struck the top of the temple, dazzling Tali. The thunder was a simultaneous, deafening blast. The storm exploded around them, four more bolts reflecting off the wind-polished columns, the soldiers’ helmets, swords and shields, and a great silver urn in the centre of the table. Then it stopped.
But the dazzling reflections off the urn did not. They grew brighter, extending in gorgeous shimmers and sprays of red and crimson, black and purple and violet. The urn split apart and the pieces rolled off the edges of the table. The brilliant moving colours remained, and grew. They began to take on the form of a man, a huge man, bigger than Rix, with a great bloated head and a vast prow of a nose, armoured in opal. A man whose very skin was armour made from black opal, reflecting the light in every direction.
He’s not the chancellor’s ally, Tali realised. We shouldn’t have let him through. We’ve done a really stupid thing.
The black opal was beautiful. Beautiful and terrifying. It enclosed the man Tali had seen in the Abysm, turned to stone.
Now the stone had been made flesh.
Grandys.
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?