“You mean you’ve got some left?”
Rannilt turned out her pockets. A cube of journey-cake the size of a man’s fist, a thick, spicy sausage six inches long, a handful of nuts and a purple carrot. Having spent most of her life in a half-starved state, because the other slave children had picked on her and stolen her dinner, Rannilt pilfered food wherever she found it and squirrelled it away for later.
“What a treasure you are,” cried Tali, embracing her.
The word reminded her about Tirnan Twil being a monument to failed ambition — but not Grandys. “The objects there weren’t his treasures,” Tali said aloud. “Rezire said, they were things that would be seen as treasures by those who worshipped him.”
“Don’t know what you’re talkin’ about,” Rannilt said sleepily.
“Grandys would never have put his own treasures on display at Tirnan Twil. We’ve been looking in the wrong place. He was still hoping to uncover the secret of king-magery, so he would have hidden everything carefully.”
“The servants of Garramide were always talkin’ about ancient treasures,” said Rannilt.
“That must be what Swelt was hinting at when he died,” cried Tali.
“About Grandys’ daughter?”
“Yes, but she wasn’t his real daughter. It explains everything.”
Rannilt yawned.
“Garramide is one of the greatest fortresses in Hightspall,” Tali went on. “It must have cost a fortune, but blood was everything to the Herovians. Grandys woudn’t have gone to all that expense to protect an adopted daughter.”
“Why not?”
“She wasn’t of his blood — so she wouldn’t be that important to him. What if she was part of his cover, to conceal that Garramide was built to protect his real treasures — including everything he’d taken from Lyf’s temple? And it’s all still there?”
“Are we goin’ back to Garramide?” said Rannilt.
“We’d better — before Grandys hears that Lyf is searching for the key.”
Once the child was asleep, Tali prepared herself, then probed out with exquisite care towards Lyf’s temple. She thought he had detected her before, and if he had, he was bound to be on alert, but she had to know what he was doing.
The connection was easy this time. Too easy? She waited until her heart had steadied, then peered into the temple.
Lyf was standing on his crutches, looking towards the rear of his temple, where all one hundred and six of his ghostly ancestors were arrayed in a semicircle, facing him.
“We’ve been over this a dozen times,” said Errek First-King. “The balance is tipping rapidly, and if it goes much further, the Engine will shake the land to pieces.”
“I fear to go near it,” said Lyf. “I still remember the agony when those specks of alkoyl landed on me in my caverns — and that was spent alkoyl. In its native form — ” He shuddered.
“Lucky none landed on the little heatstone,” Errek said wryly. “But you must go on. You’ve got to heal the land while it’s still possible. It’s your first and most important duty.”
“How can I? The key hasn’t been found.”
“Then find it, before Grandys does.”
“I don’t know where else to look.”
“If you can’t, it’s the end,” said Errek.
“If it is, I’m going to make sure of him first,” Lyf said grimly. “I’m striking with everything I have.”
“He’ll be expecting that.”
“I dare say, but my forces outnumber his five to one. And we have weapons we haven’t used yet. Weapons he’s never seen before. We’ll crush him.”
“What if you don’t? Have you considered that?”
“I’ve considered everything. If the worst happens, we still have Cython.”
“Which has eighty-five thousand Pale. Eighty-five thousand too many, if it’s our final bolthole. What are you going to do about them?”
Lyf did not speak for a long time. Then he said in a flat voice, “The Pale cannot stay. Nor can we allow them to leave, knowing all the secrets of Cython.”
“Then the Pale must die,” said Errek.
As Tali wrenched free, her binding oath tightened until it was choking her. This was the moment she had been dreading. She had to return to slavery and save the Pale. And she had no idea how it could be done.
There was no possibility of going to Garramide now. There wasn’t time. She would have to pray that Grandys did not realise Lyf was searching for the key. If he discovered it was the circlet, he would know exactly where to find it.
Her ride west to join her allies at Nyrdly felt like the ride of the damned.
CHAPTER 85
“Tali, can we talk about this mad plan of yours?” said Tobry, moving his horse alongside hers.
It was the day after she had rejoined the chancellor’s company at Nyrdly. Tali and Tobry were riding across the plain of Reffering, the site of an ancient battle a few miles from the chancellor’s camp.
“Not now,” she said. “I’m trying to think.”
“I don’t want you going back to Cython.”
“Neither do I, but I swore a blood oath.”
“Nobody could hold you to it. Not for this.”
“The point of a blood oath, as you well know, is to hold oneself to the purpose.”
“Even so — ”
“My friend Mia was executed in Cython for using magery — magery she was only using because of something stupid I’d done. I swore to make up for what had been done to her, and my mother, by saving the Pale. I can’t break that oath.”
“It doesn’t mean you have to go back. We should be looking for the circlet.”
“There isn’t time. Lyf’s planning to put the Pale to death. I heard him say so.”
“If you do this, you’ll either end up dead, or enslaved again.”
“Do you think I don’t know that?” she shouted. “Do you imagine I don’t think about it constantly? Go away. You’re only making things worse.”
Tobry whirled his horse and rode off. Tali immediately regretted her outburst, but she felt relieved, too. He radiated anxiety and she could not deal with it as well.
If they caught her, and they probably would, they would make an example of her to rival the greatest horrors of the war.
When she returned, the chancellor was alone in his quarters, a large space created by stretching tent canvas over four walls of the ruined fortress at Nyrdly. He spent all his time there these days. The old chancellor would have punished her for riding off after Grandys’ attack, but when she had returned with Rannilt all he’d said was, “You’re back! About bloody time.”
His poisoned arm had been amputated but it had not cured what ailed him. He was in great pain and increasingly withdrawn. If it came to war, how could he hope to lead his troops?
“My army still hasn’t arrived and now I’m worried,” he said as she entered.
“The weather’s been bad.”
“Not that bad. And few of my former allies have answered my call. There’s anarchy and rebellion in the south-west, around Rutherin. Lyf holds Bleddimire, and the centre and the south, while Grandys will soon have everything north of Lake Fumerous.”
“That still leaves the Nandelochs.”
“For how long? My army, if it gets here, comprises only nine thousand men, and I’m struggling to recruit more because they’re all flocking to Grandys.”
“Nine thousand makes a fine army,” Tali said more stoutly than she felt.
“The Cythonians have crushed bigger ones, and they’ve got ten times that many, most dug in, in cities where it would take many times their number to get them out. I can’t beat them, Tali. I have to face that.”
“So you’re saying Hightspall is lost.”