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.
CHAPTER 73
“It’ll be all right.” Rannilt was stroking Tali’s burning brow. “You’ll get better, I promise. Ooh, that rotten old Grandys. But you showed him, Tali. You showed him good.”
Tali lay on the wet flagstones in the temple, wishing the falling rain could quench the fire in her head, though she did not think anything ever would. Why had she interfered? Why had she urged Rannilt to use her unfathomable gift to let Grandys through? She’d thought she was helping to keep Lyf in check. Had she created a disaster?
At least she had broken Grandys’ command spell, and that would be worth a song or two when she got home, if she ever did. But why had she attracted his attention in the first place? Why hadn’t she hidden, as Rannilt had been urging her to do?
The shattered matriarchs and Lyf’s entourage had sailed south to Caulderon, a few miles away across the lake. The provincial leaders were riding north up the long peninsula, then fanning out in all directions, some to shore up their own positions, others to work out how they could capitalise on what had happened at Glimmering. Only Rix’s small party remained, leaderless now.
And the chancellor’s two hundred.
She had not known him to lose control before, but an hour after Grandys’ departure the chancellor was still stalking back and forth, incandescent with rage. Not just because he had been so utterly upstaged. Not just because Grandys had stolen two priceless ebony pearls from under his nose. Not even because Axil Grandys was a despised Herovian and a loose cannon whom no one could predict.
Worse, unimaginably so, Grandys had spat on the chancellor, repudiated him then ignored him, and that could never be endured.
“Clear out!” he raged to his servants and guards. “Get out of my sight.”
“Not goin’ nowhere,” said Rannilt. “Tali needs me.”
“Not you! Attendant!” he bawled. A young woman came running, a pretty brunette.
“Get my chief magian!”
She fled.
“What are we gonna do, Tali?” Rannilt said quietly. “Are we gonna escape again?”
“I don’t see how we can, child.”
“Why not?”
“The chancellor’s guards are watching us, see? And if we ran, on this narrow peninsula there’s only one way to go, so they’d soon catch us.”
“We could try,” said Rannilt stubbornly. “We’ve escaped before, lots of times.”
“Where could we go? We’re in Lyf’s territory here, and everywhere north for many miles. His armies are still hunting me, and anyone who sees us will know that we’re Pale.”
“Chancellor’s a bad man,” said Rannilt. “I don’t wanna go with him.”
Tali looked across at the chancellor, who was pacing across the temple and back. “Me either, but Rix and Tobry are gone. At least, while we’re with him, the safe conduct holds.”
“He wants your blood.”
“Not any more. He has no shifters left to heal.”
“The pearl then. He still wants it.”
“I know, but I can’t do anything about that right now.”
Shortly the tubby little chief magian puffed up. “Lord Chancellor?”
“Form an umbrella of magery over Tali, immediately. Pull it down so tight that not a glimmer of aura can get in or out. She can’t be found or located, or you lose your head.”
The chief magian jumped. “Immediately, Lord Chancellor. But… may I ask why?”
“You may not!” The chancellor relented, pulled the chief magian close. “Tali bears the master pearl.”
The chief magian’s round head shot around. “How do you know?”
“Because Lizue attacked her in Rutherin to get it.”
“Then Lyf knows…”
“And he won’t rest until it’s his. Need I say that if he gets Tali’s pearl, it’s all over for Hightspall. And,” the chancellor continued with a nasty grin, “you know how the enemy hate magery and magians. You’ll be number one on their disembowelling list.”
“I’ll get the umbrella started right away.”
The chief magian fetched a silver elbrot, a larger and far more ornate one than the wooden elbrot Tali had seen Tobry use. He walked around her, chanting and moving it in snail-trail patterns.