Gasping like a stranded fish, she tried to force the membrane into her mouth so she could bite through it. It would not stretch far enough. Her head was spinning. She had only moments of consciousness left.
The Sullen Man leapt at Lizue, feinted, then kicked her legs from under her. She landed hard and groped for the knife. He drew a knife of his own and stabbed her in the left thigh, the blade going in all the way to the bone. She cried out and slumped, the wound gushing blood.
He ran to Tali, who was starting to choke, and tore the clear bag apart.
“Out!” he gasped. “Run upstairs.”
Lizue staggered to her feet, the heavy knife in her hand, and plunged it through the Sullen Man’s chest into his heart. He fell dead without a sound.
Rannilt leapt up, picked up a fallen chair and whacked Lizue across the back with it. She reached out to Tali, her face twisted in anguish. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
Another of those golden bubbles formed at her fingertip, shot across the cell, struck Tali on the forehead and burst there with a hot flare of light. Rannilt bolted out the door and up the steps, screaming for help.
Tali was rubbing her throbbing forehead when she felt her gift rising — rising all the way this time. Lizue staggered towards her, swinging the knife. Tali thrust out her right arm, her fingers pointing towards Lizue’s throat. Lizue froze.
The power was there but it would not come. They stared at one another for a long time, then Lizue smiled and lurched forwards. Tali threw herself through the open cell door and slammed it in Lizue’s face.
Rannilt had disappeared up the steps; Lizue was struggling to get the door open with her bloody hands. Tali looked around. If she remained here, she would die, for she was too weak to fight.
The stairs and the main part of the fortress were to the left, but Rannilt would have alerted the guards up there by now. Tali turned right and was heading down the dimly lit corridor when a rear door opened and Kroni came through, carrying a bucket of water for the water clock. Tali froze for a second, then continued, her face turned away, but he merely nodded and continued past. With the glamour gone, he had not recognised her, but he would soon discover what had happened. She lurched through the door, closed it behind her and ran.
But without food, winter clothing or any knowledge of where she might get help, where was she to run to? The Sullen Man might be dead, but Lizue would come after her. And the chancellor would soon read the signs. The head bag would give her secret away.
Within the hour, he would know she bore the master pearl.
And he would kill her before he allowed the enemy to get it.
CHAPTER 15
“What’s that smell?” said Lyf. He was at the door of his underground temple, formerly the murder cellar beneath Palace Ricinus. After many days of labour all traces of the cellar had been removed and the temple stripped back to its original stonework. “You told me it had been thoroughly scrubbed.”
“Three times it’s been cleaned, Lord King,” said his personal attendant, Moley Gryle, “and the final time I did it myself. When we’re finished, it’s as perfect as we can make it, yet within hours the smell comes back.”
“Where’s it coming from?”
Lyf hobbled inside on his crutches. He could have floated in, or flown, but it would have felt sacrilegious to use the magery of the pearls in such a place. In olden times, the temple had one purpose only — healing. Besides, the pearl magery had been weakening rapidly of late. Had he drawn too much to ensure his fabulous victories? All the more reason to get the master pearl as soon as possible.
Before the Hightspallers had arrived on the First Fleet, this temple had been one of the most sacred places in Cythe, the private temple of the king. Here a succession of kings had worked their king-magery to heal the turbulent and disaster-prone land, as well as those unfortunate people whom ordinary healers could not help. At least, most of them. Some people suffered ailments beyond even the kings’ healing.
But the temple had been debauched by Axil Grandys, who had betrayed the young, naive King Lyf there, hacked off his feet and dragged him away to his death. Curiously, though, Grandys had protected the temple when every other building in the capital city of Lucidand had been torn down, and he had spent the following years in a fruitless attempt to find the secret of king-magery.
“There, Lord King,” said Gryle, pointing.
She ushered him in and across to the centre. Everything had been removed from the former cellar, even the plaster on the walls and the staircase that had spiralled down through the ceiling when it had been the murder cellar. Now it was an empty, ovoid space some forty yards long and twenty-five wide, with a curving ceiling like the top of a skull. A skull with a hole in it, for the staircase opening had not yet been plugged. Lyf wondered if that was the problem.
“This is the spot.” Gryle indicated the large flagstone in front of her.
Lyf measured the cellar with his eyes. “The altar stood here. The table and benches were over there — that’s where the Five Herovians used their foul magery to compel my signature onto the lying charter they used to justify the theft of our country. And here — ” He choked, but collected himself. “Here — see the gash in the stone — this is the place where they held me down while Grandys hacked my feet off with his accursed blade.”
“The sacred stones cannot forget the crime that was committed here,” Gryle said sententiously. “They reek to remind us that we must never forget.”
“I wonder,” said Lyf. “After I’ve completed my morning’s devotions, take up the stones, remove the earth beneath and re-lay them.”
“It will be done.” Gryle went to speak, hesitated for almost a minute, then said, “Lord King, may I raise a matter with you?”
“If you must.”
“Lord King, this is not something that concerns me personally… not deeply, at any rate — but so many of your people are talking about it that I feel I must speak.”
Lyf made an impatient gesture, and she hurried on.
“Many people are troubled by the way the war is, um… going, Lord King.”
“You may speak candidly, Gryle.”
“Our people want Cythe back, and the enemy punished. But they feel the destruction of every house, every palace, every library and every temple built by the enemy over the past two thousand years is… excessive.”
“It’s what they did to us,” said Lyf, nettled.
“And they’re sickened by all the unnecessary killing.”
“Do you know how many Cythians they put down?” bellowed Lyf, brandishing a fist at her. “Fifty thousand, at least.”
Gryle held her ground, though only with an effort. “Lord King, I do. But that was long ago and we — they — we feel — ”
“You asked to speak, Gryle, and I have heard you.”
“Yes, Lord King. And may I say — ”
“You may not!”
“Lord King?”
“Get out.”
As she was leaving, a courier came running. “Lord King, an urgent message from Lizue, at Rutherin.”
“Yes?”
“The disguised prisoner was the escaped Pale, Tali vi Torgrist. Lizue almost took her head, but one of the chancellor’s spies interfered and the Pale got away. Lizue is injured, though not badly enough to stop her from trying again.”
His severed shinbones began to throb. Could victory be slipping from his grasp already? No, he would not allow it.
“Send gauntlings,” said Lyf. “All we have. Find Tali.”
The courier withdrew. Lyf called for his daily report on the war. An officer he did not recognise came to present it, a slender young man with prematurely white hair. General Hillish was leading the army against Bleddimire, and Lyf had banished General Rochlis, that great hero of the war, to a fortress in the north, for insubordination.