He carried the bracket of candles to the wall. And started. The painting was crude, but it was definitely a man. A dark-skinned man, darker than any Cythonian he had ever seen, almost black. Their skin was pale grey, or occasionally a steely blue-grey, but seldom dark. Though it might darken in the sun, he supposed.
This man was heavily built but not fat — he was massively muscular, yet his arms and legs were thrown out in unnatural angles as though he was doing a dervish dance. No, not a dance. Rix looked closer. The man was in pain — an agony so intense that it had twisted him in ways no normal human could be twisted. He was screaming in agony.
As Rix moved the light, a fleck of paint reflected it back at him in brilliant, shimmering red. Odd, Rix thought. He moved the light the other way. This time the reflection was emerald, and then it was black.
Hair stirred on the top of Rix’s head. What did that remind him of? How could the light be reflected in completely different colours?
Opal could. Where had he seen opal that looked like this? He could not recall; he had emptied his mind too thoroughly. Without thinking, he rubbed the worn wire-bound hilt of his sword, and the image he had drawn blasted into his mind so clearly that he cried out.
He had seen that tormented figure several times before — a man carved from a single enormous mass of black opal — and each time it had been after touching Maloch’s hilt. Tali had seen it too; it had been floating in the white shaft of the Abysm, next to Lyf’s caverns under Precipitous Crag. The Abysm: the most sacred of all the enemy’s holy places, the very conduit between death and life.
Rix also knew who it was, for Lyf had told him and Tali in the cellar before stealing Deroe’s three ebony pearls. The figure wasn’t carved from opal — it was a man turned to opal.
It was the petrified body of the greatest of the Five Heroes, the man who had begun the war with Cythe and founded Hightspall. Rix had been drawn to him from the very first time he had heard the story, and was drawn to him still. Powerful, ruthless, creative and endlessly fascinating, he was a man Rix would have followed anywhere.
The black opal figure was the remains of his ancestor, the first Herovian to step ashore in the land he would take for his own. The man who had brought Maloch to Cythe.
Axil Grandys.
“You should not have painted that.”
Rix whirled. A woman stood in the doorway, one pale arm outflung, pointing to the mural. In the dim light he could not make out her features, only the hook of a mouth, a plough nose and one dark-shadowed, staring eye. And layer upon layer of garments, all odd sizes and unmatched colours. It was the witch-woman, Astatin.
“You should not have painted that.”
“Why not?” said Rix.
“Garramide will fall and all its ancient, secret treasures will be lost.”
Then she was gone, silent on slippered feet.
He rubbed his dead hand and shivered. It was colder than it had ever been; icy. What had changed since he’d painted Grandys? Was the enchantment of the sword involved, and if so, what did it want? Why had it brought him here, anyway?
Why had Maloch involved itself in the rejoining of Rix’s hand? He knew it had; the magery of the sword had made his fingers tingle at the time. Why had the sword given him this gift?
He lowered the sword and walked around the outer wall of the observatory, the tip of the blade scraping along the flagstones behind him. What was the sword’s price? He knew there had to be one — it must have been enchanted for a purpose.
Was it the remnant of an ancient enchantment that had nothing to do with Rix, as the chancellor had said? Maloch was an ancient family heirloom. But who had put the protection on it; and why?
Or had it been placed on the sword by one of Lady Ricinus’s magians, before she gave the sword to Rix? He had no way of finding out. The high magian of the palace had been hung from the front gates of the palace beside his master and mistress.
He had to know more about Maloch, and about the man who had owned it, perhaps even forged and enchanted it. Rix had to find out everything he could about Axil Grandys. If his restored hand was the gift of the sword, he had better find out its price as well. And if he could not pay the price, he should cut his hand off right now and feed it to the dogs.
Assuming they would have it.
CHAPTER 30
“What happened to the gauntling?” said Holm.
“I don’t know. Lizue leapt off onto the deck and it flew away.”
Holm picked up the head bag and stretched it between his fingers. Tali tensed. Had he been at the crapper? Or had he absented himself while Lizue did the gruesome business? He might well have betrayed Tali, for a fortune. It did not mean that he would want to see her head cut off.
“What’s this for?” said Holm.
“No idea,” Tali lied.
He tossed it overboard. Tali tested Lizue’s blade on her forearm; it shaved the tiny hairs off like a razor. She swung it through the air. It was heavy enough to take her head off with a single blow, but well balanced. And she needed a weapon.
“The gauntling can’t have gone far,” she said. “It would have come back to pick Lizue up once she killed me.”
“Then I dare say it’s up there somewhere, watching for her signal.”
He looked up and Tali did too, but during the battle they had sailed into a fog bank and only small patches of sky could be seen through it. “It could be anywhere. Or gone.”
“Either way, we can expect to be harried all the way across the straits until we get to Esterlyz, the furthest that the enemy’s writ currently extends. Or so I’m told.”
“You seem remarkably well informed for a humble clock attendant.”
“It does seem odd, now you mention it,” he said cheerfully.
“Are you planning to tell me how you know so much?” And who you really are, and what you want of me.
“I don’t believe so.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t want to.”
She had no answer to that. “Where are you taking me?” she said waspishly. “I’m entitled to ask that, aren’t I?”
“You can ask whatever you like.”
“Well?”
“I’m taking you somewhere safe — assuming I can find such a place.”
“Where?”
“I haven’t decided yet, but probably the Nandeloch Mountains.”
“I don’t know anything about them,” said Tali. “My tutors in Cython were a little hazy on geography.”
“Come inside.”
In the cabin, he withdrew a map from a chart drawer, spread it on the little table, and circled his forefinger around the north-eastern corner of Hightspall.
“These are the Nandelochs,” said Holm. “Hundreds of little valleys separated by high ranges. Brutal frosts and heavy snow in winter; torrential rain in summer. The people there are fiercely independent, and the Nandelochs are the best place in Hightspall to hide.”
“How do we get there?” she said warily.
“I haven’t worked that out yet — ”
The distinctive shrieking whistle raised Tali’s hackles. As Holm ran to the cabin door, a round, glass object the size of a large melon smashed on the front deck, spilling a thick yellow fluid everywhere.
“What the hell was that?” said Holm.
“The gauntling,” said Tali, darting back for the crossbow.
It came around again. She aimed for its round yellow eye, but missed. Before she could reload, it dropped a blazing, pitch-covered brand onto the front deck and kept going. The yellow fluid exploded in flame.
Tali snatched another bolt. “It — it’s trying to kill us…”
“Like I said, gauntlings aren’t predictable. And there’s a powerful psychic bond between gauntling and rider…”
Tali slammed the bolt into its groove and wound the crank. “What are you saying?”
“That when it saw its rider killed, and the psychic bond between rider and gauntling snapped, it went renegade,” said Holm. “It’s disobeying its orders; it’s bent on revenge.”