“Have you got a better idea?”
“No.”
Tali gnawed her lower lip. “Where’s Tobry?”
“No idea.”
“I’ve got to find him. We need his magery more than ever now.”
Radl heaved Holm over her shoulder and carried him down towards the wall, which was cracked in several places but not broken through. The biggest Pale began attacking it with sledgehammers.
Tali went the other way. “Anyone seen Tobry?”
No answer.
She heard shouting from up the drive, then the clashing of weapons and the screams of the dying. A band of some twenty Pale, mostly women, ran down. Two thin, leathery men followed, looking as though they had been baked in the heatstone mines, like Tali’s poor father.
They were so dazed that she did not think they recognised her. She picked up a fragment of heatstone and held it in her fist, waiting for the pursuing enemy. There they were, half a dozen of them. She hurled the fragment to land at their feet. Two soldiers fell and the rest retreated.
Using the mage glass, she scanned the tunnels for Tobry and saw him at once. He was several hundred yards away, and this time the image was absolutely clear. He was backing along the passage, bleeding from both upper arms and the right shoulder, and shaking badly.
And, she noted with alarm, there was a downy growth on his cheeks, between the four days’ growth of beard. Was he turning?
“Tali?” he said, his voice the barest croak. “Need my potion, now.”
If he could not take it in the next few minutes, he would have a full-blown attack of shifter madness. And she had it in her pack.
Tali checked on the map to make sure of the quickest route, then turned and ran, along the main tunnel and around a corner. Three passages opened up before her. She took the left one and was racing along it when she realised that she had never been this way before; this passage had not been here when she was a slave. But the floor was worn, and there was dust on the wall carvings, so it wasn’t newly built, either.
She stopped. This wasn’t right. Many parts of Cython were forbidden to the Pale, but how had she got into one? As she turned back, a door slid across ahead of her, sealing the passage. She turned again and her nemesis stood there.
“You fell into my trap,” said Lyf.
CHAPTER 97
“I lured you to Cython with a lie,” said Lyf, smiling. He wore boots and still supported himself on crutches, though he wasn’t holding them — they were moving of their own accord.
“W-what?” Tali felt numb; she couldn’t think.
“I never planned to put the Pale to death. Do you really think I’m such a monster as to repay Hightspall’s genocide with my own?”
She didn’t reply. Yes, she thought. I think you are such a monster.
“But now your people have rebelled and attacked their lawful masters,” he went on, “what can my people do but cut them down — in self-defence?”
Tali’s knees wobbled. She had given him the justification he needed, and this was his revenge for what she had done to him in the murder cellar. She had doomed the people she had come here to save.
“You manipulated me all along,” she whispered. “Your revenge must be sweet indeed.”
He clunked towards her. “This isn’t revenge, it’s war, and I didn’t incite your people to rebel and attack their lawful masters. You did!”
“You’re not our lawful masters,” she said dully. “You enslaved us.”
“Slavery is perfectly legal.”
“Not in my country.”
“Ah, but you aren’t in your country, are you? You’re in mine, the Pale too, and my laws apply.”
In the distance she could hear the clash of swords, an occasional thump as a piece of heatstone went off, and the distinctive, high-voiced cries of her people. Death cries. “How long have I been your dupe?”
“I discovered that you were spying on me a few weeks ago,” said Lyf.
“And you’ve been feeding me lies ever since.”
“Didn’t you wonder that, every time you spied on me, I was talking about the same thing?”
“The key to king-magery.” What a fool she’d been to think she could outwit Lyf.
“Just so. I needed the master pearl to lead me to the key, but you were too well guarded. So why not put the idea into your head — perhaps you would find the key for me.”
“It wasn’t at Tirnan Twil.”
He came forwards again, shrugged. “No matter. I’ve had a better idea.”
The piece of heatstone in her loincloth pouch was hot against her belly. She felt its square outline through the fabric. Was there a way to use it?
“How did you know?” she said limply.
“I’ve been aware of your blood oath for some time. It showed me the way to lure you here, and the last time you spied on me I managed to overhear you, briefly.”
“So that’s what the leaf of the iron book was all about — to lure me here like the fool I am.”
“There’s no shame in being fooled by me.” Lyf was only a few feet away. Within striking distance.
What was his weakness? Magery might be weakening everywhere, but here in his realm, so close to the vast heatstone deposit that held his lost king-magery, his gift was bound to be stronger than hers.
She could not harm him with heatstone, either. In the caverns, when she had broken that little heatstone, it had empowered him. What about his legs? Since he still used crutches, she assumed that he had not found a way to restore his amputated feet.
His eyes narrowed; he was about to attack. Tali dived, not at him but for the left-hand crutch, which supported his most damaged leg. She caught hold of it and wrenched. He teetered but it didn’t come free — it was bound to him with magery. She landed on her back, kicked upwards with both legs at the other crutch and sent it flying.
As Lyf crashed to the floor, he reached out and called the crutch to him; he was already rising as it came skidding across the stone. Tali couldn’t fight him, he was too strong. She turned and bolted down the dimly lit tunnel.
Shortly she reached an intersection. She had planned to go left and circle around to get back to the Pale, but the left passage was blocked. She went right, loping along, trying to get ahead. The next passage to the left was also blocked, and so was the way directly ahead.
He seemed to be driving her to the right, but why? What was down that way? The whole world was silent now, save for the audible thumping of her heart. She stopped, checked the passage each way, then located herself with the map. She wasn’t far from the heatstone mine, though this passage approached it from an unfamiliar direction. Was he driving her that way, deliberately exposing her to the heatstone that would hurt her and strengthen him?
The mage glass revealed fighting all around the toadstool grottoes and the drive down to the chymical level. The Pale still had not broken through and now they appeared to be trapped; the enemy were advancing along the main tunnel from either direction. She put map and glass in her pack and stumbled on.
Tali didn’t know this passage, which was cut through grey stone with a bluish tint. Her head began to throb, the bones of her skull to creak — she must be approaching the heatstone mine.
There was no sign of Lyf so she checked the map again — and wished she had not. The blurry image in the centre of the lens was Tobry, shifted to a caitsthe and rampaging up a tunnel, his great mouth stretched wide in an insane howl. He had gone berserker and was flinging bloody bodies to right and left, but the scene was out of focus all around him and she could not tell if the bodies were Pale or the enemy. She frantically tried to focus the mage glass, but lost him, and in the chaos she could not find him again.
“Tobry!” she screamed. It was one of her darkest moments; the berserker madness meant that his end could not be far away. And Holm could not help him, even if he were able to get close, because Tali still had the emergency potion in her pack.