“Who are you?” said Lyf.
“Captain Durling, Lord King.”
“Make it quick, Durling. I’ve much on my mind today.”
Durling bowed. “Caulderon is quiet, Lord King. The people are thoroughly cowed.”
“No signs of insurrection anywhere?”
“There are, from time to time, but we put them down swiftly and execute the ringleaders, which serves as a lesson to the rest of the city.”
“Good. Continue.”
“There was some trouble in the north, around Lakeland, but Rochlis has sorted it out. He’s a good man, Lord King.”
“He has an overly sensitive conscience for a military man,” Lyf said coldly. All was not forgiven. “What’s the state of the south?”
“Steady. It’s too miserably cold there for trouble, Lord King. I doubt you’ll have to worry about it until the spring.”
“How about the west? What’s the chancellor up to?”
“Growing his army and making alliances.”
“How many troops does he have now?”
“About seven thousand, according to our spies. But most are inexperienced, and they’re poorly led.”
“I had all his officers killed after we took Caulderon,” said Lyf. “You can train a soldier in a couple of weeks, but it takes months to produce a good officer — or years. And Bleddimire?”
“Your army is in position for battle and morale is good.”
“Have my spies mentioned Bleddimire’s morale?”
“Weakening by the hour.”
“Then I can safely leave the business to Hillish. He’ll soon have another famous victory. That only leaves the Nandeloch Mountains.”
“The north-east is as rebellious as ever,” said Durling, “but we can’t do anything about it until spring.”
“Why not?”
“The mountains are too high, too rugged, too cold. We’d need an army of twenty-five thousand to subdue the area and we don’t even have five thousand to spare. Besides, if we tried to fight there in winter we could lose half an army.”
“Why?” Lyf said coldly. He did not appreciate such advice.
“The roads are bad and the snow heavy. We run the risk of having our forces cut off by avalanches and freezing to death.”
“Their petty little earldoms can wait until spring,” said Lyf. “Is there any news of Rixium Ricinus?”
“I’m afraid not, Lord King… though we have hundreds of troops looking.”
“I am displeased. Find him!”
Durling withdrew.
Lyf closed the doors, barred them and walked around the temple. He knew it was empty, but caution was ingrained in him and in this matter he could not take any risks. Once sure that no spying device had been hidden inside, he continued his painstaking search. He would remove every stone in the walls and ceiling if he had to.
The key had to be found. The need was becoming desperate.
CHAPTER 16
“Where did I go wrong?” wailed Wil the Sump, rubbing his cavernous, eaten-away nostril until it bled.
The little man was deep underground in the Hellish Conduit, a down-plunging passageway so sweltering and humid that each breath clagged in his throat and had to be consciously swallowed. A place where green, corrosive fluids seeped from the walls and welled sluggishly up through cracks in the floor; where sickening emanations howled out of the depths; where luminous, tentacled growths sprouted from every crack and cranny, and tiny multi-legged creatures cowered in cracks while the plants were the predators.
Wil clawed at the encrusted wall until his fingernails tore to splinters, but it did not ease the agony he felt inside. The only thing that could take away the pain of his failure was the perilous alchymical solvent called alkoyl. But he had sniffed the last of his alkoyl eight days ago, he had no way of getting more, and withdrawal was like fishhooks dragging through his brain.
That wasn’t the worst, though. Wil’s beloved land was in danger and no one else could save it. The ice sheets were creeping up from the southern pole, closing in around the coast, and if they were not stopped they would grind all life off the face of the land, as they had already extinguished everything on the great southern island of Suden.
To save his country, Wil had to erase the iron book, The Consolation of Vengeance, that he had stolen from under Lyf’s nose, then reforge the pages and rewrite them to tell the true story. Wil loved books and stories more than he loved his own miserable life, and the true story of Cython had to be told. He had to know how the story ended, but how could he find the right ending now?
He felt sure it involved the subterranean Engine, way down the Hellish Conduit at the heart of the world. Cythonians believed that the Engine powered the workings of the land itself, and Wil had planned to open the stopcocks to make the Engine race and melt the ice away. But the Engine had proven to be so vast, hot and terrifying that his courage had failed him, and he had run and kept on running. The Engine’s story was beyond his power to write.
Nor could he rewrite the iron book. He had not yet succeeded in erasing the words Lyf had written, the words that had seemed so right until the one had appeared and made Lyf’s story go wrong. That was Wil’s fault too. Long ago he had lied to the matriarchs about the one, and though they had put all those little slave girls to death to get rid of her, Tali had survived and changed the story. She had changed everything.
To erase the iron book, Wil had to have more alkoyl, but the stores held in Cython were closed to him now. The only other place to get more was the source, the Engine itself, for as it worked the Engine wept small quantities of the universal solvent. However he dared not approach the source.
Until something changed, he would have to wait. But his pain could be endured no longer and he had a remedy for that. In the dark of night he would creep up the Hellish Conduit into Cython, and there he would strangle the life out of the first Pale he encountered. He should have killed Tali the first time he had seen her.
That was only right and just.
Tali was the one.
It was all her fault.
CHAPTER 17
“Are you going to rescue the Lady Tali?” said Glynnie.
Rix had been rowing across the lake for an hour, guided through the black night by a single bright star.
“How could I?” he said curtly, for the rope binding his dead hand to the oar had chafed most of the skin off his wrist and the pain was unrelenting.
“You killed a whole pack of shifters,” she said, and the awe in her voice was evident. “And with only your bare hands, you beat all those guards to save us. You can do anything.”
Mentioning Benn would have been needlessly cruel. “I can’t rescue Tali,” said Rix. “I don’t know where the chancellor’s taken her. Besides, he’ll have her hidden by the best magery there is — magery that even Lyf would struggle to break.” He rowed on, wincing with every stroke. “Anyway, I couldn’t have done anything without you.”
“Of course you could. I was in the way — ”
“Without you and Benn I’d be dead,” he said bleakly.
“Rix!” she cried.
“I’m a dishonoured man, and I was going to — ”
“You’re a wonderful man,” she said passionately. “You’re brave and noble and true to your word. And kind. In all my life I’ve never known anyone as kind as you.”
A tight feeling in his chest prevented him from speaking for a while. “Thank you for saying so,” he said gruffly. “If it wasn’t for you…”
“What?” said Glynnie. “What were you going to do?”
“Give my life away, fighting the enemy.”
“No!” Her cry rang out across the water.
“Hush!” He stopped rowing and cupped a hand to his ear, but heard no sound save ripples lapping against the dinghy.