“Lyf had to die. There was no other way to get the king-magery. And without it, we could not create the Promised Realm.”
“You didn’t have to hack his feet off. You didn’t have to inflict all the pain and suffering on him you could. You didn’t have to carry out all those massacres, or destroy every precious item of Cythe’s great civilisation.”
“They had to go. What does it matter?”
“It matters,” said Yulia, and Rix could tell she was speaking between her clenched teeth, “because your viciousness brought out something in Lyf he never knew he had. That’s how the departing king-magery created his undying wrythen. That’s where he found the strength to hunt us down and turn us to opal. That gave him the burning urge to vengeance that’s brought him, and his people, all the way down the aeons to today, and his boot across the throat of our land. It matters because your failure lost us the Promised Realm.”
“It’s not lost,” said Grandys, defensively. “Just delayed.”
“Then delay no longer. You swore a binding oath to do this. Do it now.”
“To tear Hightspall down and reshape the island into the Promised Realm, I have to have king-magery. Nothing else will do.”
Tear Hightspall down? Reshape the island? Did Grandys mean to destroy everything in Hightspall and create the Promised Realm from scratch? This was worse than Rix had imagined. Worse than he could have imagined. And it raised an even more troubling problem, though he could not bring it to mind.
“Then get it,” said Yulia.
“I will — just as soon as I get Lyf’s two pearls, and the master pearl.”
“Take the master pearl first,” said Lirriam.
“It won’t be easy to lure the craven dog of a chancellor from his kennel,” said Grandys.
“It will if we move to all-out war.”
“Go on.”
“Were we to wage war with the same ferocity that we used to take Rebroff,” said Lirriam, “we could control Lakeland, Fennery and Gordion within a week. The chancellor couldn’t hide in Garramide then — he’d be too afraid we’d sweep all the way south and take Caulderon back.”
“Especially if I drop hints to his spies that I’m planning to,” said Grandys. “He’ll have to come out of his lair then, and he’ll want Tali close by, in case he needs to take the pearl for himself. As soon as he moves, I’ll take an elite raiding party, capture his chief magian and force him to reveal Tali.”
“What if he won’t?”
“I’ll squeeze him until his eyeballs pop. There aren’t many men I can’t break, Lirriam.”
“I can break them all,” said Lirriam, smoothing her hands over the curve of her belly.
He scowled and rubbed his bloodshot eyes. “Ahh, I do need war.”
“With all this feasting and lazing around,” said Lirriam provocatively, “you look a wreck.”
“But my armies are far smaller than Lyf’s,” said Grandys, testing her. “And he holds very strong positions.”
“Just the way we like it.” The blood lust in his eyes was reflected in her own.
“Call the men together. We march tonight — to exterminate the enemy in the north and destroy all his works. Then, once we have the remaining pearls, we recover the lost king-magery and create our Promised Realm at last.”
A cold wave passed through Rix’s head and down into his middle. Grandys did not understand what king-magery was, or how it worked. He assumed it was just another form of magery, an incredibly powerful tool that could be used for any purpose. But it wasn’t.
Rix knew, because Tali and Holm had told him, that king-magery was fundamentally a healing force that could not safely be used in any other way. If it were twisted to destructive purposes, such as tearing the land down and rebuilding it, the consequences for Hightspall could be dire.
Rix had no choice now. He had to break the command spell, take Grandys on, and kill him. It was the only way Hightspall could be saved.
CHAPTER 81
“Grandys has taken Lakeland and Fennery,” said the chancellor, agitatedly. “Now he’s marching on Gordion. What’s he going to do next?”
He’ll come for me, Tali thought. He wants revenge for Tirnan Twil, he wants my pearl, and he’s not a patient man.
His violent onslaught on the north after a week of peace had taken everyone by surprise, including Lyf. Grandys, with his unbeatable sword, his combination of old and new magery, his brilliantly unpredictable leadership and utter ruthlessness, had one astounding victory after another. The survivors of Lyf’s routed armies were retreating towards Caulderon as fast as they could go, and the chancellor was starting to panic.
Tali was too. No one understood Grandys, and no one knew what he would do next. She had a mental flash of the envoys’ heads rolling across the table. He might turn up here tonight and there was no reasoning with him, no fighting him either. He would simply have his way.
“If the passes are clear of snow, it’s only a day’s march over the mountains from Gordion to Caulderon,” said Holm, answering the chancellor’s question. “He could do another of those overnight forced marches and be at the gates of the city at daybreak tomorrow. If he chose to, he could attack Caulderon before we heard he was on his way.”
“He won’t find it easy to win,” said the chancellor, sounding like a man trying to convince himself. “Capturing a great city isn’t like taking a fortress defended by a thousand soldiers, or beating an army out on the open plain. Lyf’s got fifty thousand troops in Caulderon and they’re well dug in. Not even Grandys could take it with a ragtag army of ten thousand.”
“He could take part of it, though,” said Tobry. “With the lake walls destroyed by the tidal wave it’s a difficult city to defend.”
“And most of the people still live there,” said Holm. “If he took the southern shanty towns, say, then called on the people to rise in rebellion, he could make things awkward for Lyf.”
It’s coming, Tali thought. The end of the Pale is coming and I’m trapped here where I can’t do anything about it. I’ve got to spy on Lyf again, tonight.
The chancellor gnawed a reddened knuckle. “And I’m stuck in Garramide. Whatever possessed me to come here?”
“How were you to know Grandys would move so fast, and have such brilliant victories?” said Tali.
“Any student of history might have predicted — ” began Tobry.
“Thank you, shifter!” the chancellor snapped. “You’re here on tolerance and mine is limited.”
“But he’s right,” said Holm. “Grandys is doing exactly what he did before, when…”
“When he was alive?” said Tali.
“I don’t know that he ever died, exactly…”
“My tutors in Cython taught me that — ”
“What would your tutors know?” said the chancellor. “The Pale went to Cython as children.”
“Went isn’t the word I’d use,” Tali said coldly. “They were given to the enemy as child hostages. And never ransomed. Hightspall abandoned its noble children, then blackened their name to cover its own shame.”
“Grandys started the first war with a brilliant, ruthless stroke,” the chancellor said, ignoring her outburst. “His armies were vastly outnumbered by the enemy, yet he had victory upon victory. No one could predict what he would do next because he didn’t know himself.”
“Then how come the war went on for two hundred and fifty years?” said Tali.
“Didn’t your tutors explain that?” the chancellor said nastily. “A decade after the war began, Lyf and the other four Heroes all disappeared within a few months, and the war turned bad. They were like demi-gods by then, and their disappearance was a shattering blow to morale.”
“No one ever discovered what had happened to the Five Heroes,” said Tobry, “but everyone knew the enemy had done it.”
“To lose Grandys was bad enough,” said the chancellor. “But to lose the other four Heroes when they were all on high alert, was devastating. It meant that no one was safe.”